How To Write A Rhetorical Analysis Of Song Lyrics

song lyrics

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The Guests
One by one, the guests arrive The guests are coming through The open-hearted many The broken-hearted few And no one knows where the night is going And no one knows why the wine is flowing Oh love I need you I need you I need you I need you Oh . . . I need you now And those who dance, begin to dance Those who weep begin And "Welcome, welcome" cries a voice "Let all my guests come in." And all go stumbling through that house in lonely secrecy Saying "Do reveal yourself" or "Why has thou forsaken me?" All at once the torches flare The inner door flies open One by one they enter there In every style of passion And no one knows where the night is going ... And here they take their sweet repast While house and grounds
dissolve And one by one the guests are cast Beyond the garden wall Those who dance, begin to dance Those who weep begin Those who earnestly are lost Are lost and lost again

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One by the guests arrive The guests are coming through The broken-hearted many The open-hearted few.

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Humbled in Love
Do you remember all of those pledges That we pledged in the passionate night Ah they're soiled now, they're torn at the edges Like moths on a still yellow light No penance serves to renew them No massive transfusions of trust Why not even revenge can undo them So twisted these vows and so crushed And you say you've been humbled in love Cut down in your love Forced to kneel in the mud next to me Ah but why so bitterly turn from the one Who kneels there as deeply as thee Children have taken these pledges They have ferried them out of the past Oh beyond all the graves and the hedges Where love must go hiding at last And here where there is no description Oh here in the moment at hand No sinner need rise up forgiven No victim need limp to the stand And look dear heart, look at the virgin Look how she welcomes him into her gown Yes, and mark how the stranger's cold armour Dissolves like a star falling down Why trade this vision for desire When you may have them both You will never see a man this naked I will never hold a woman this close.

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The Window
Why do you stand by the window Abandoned to beauty and pride The thorn of the night in your bosom The spear of the age in your side Lost in the rages of fragrance Lost in the rags of remorse Lost in the waves of a sickness That loosens the high silver nerves Oh chosen love, Oh frozen love Oh tangle of matter and ghost Oh darling of angels, demons and saints And the whole broken-hearted host Gentle this soul And come forth from the cloud of unknowing And kiss the cheek of the moon The New Jerusalem glowing Why tarry all night in the ruin And leave no word of discomfort And leave no observer to mourn But climb on your tears and be silent Like a rose on its ladder of thorns Then lay your rose on the fire The fire give up to the sun The sun give over to splendour In the arms of the high holy one For the holy one dreams of a letter Dreams of a letter's death Oh bless thee continuous stutter Of the word being made into flesh Gentle this soul

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I Came So Far For Beauty
I came so far for beauty I left so much behind My patience and my family My masterpiece unsigned I thought I'd be rewarded For such a lonely choice And surely she would answer To such a very hopeless voice I practiced all my sainthood I gave to one and all But the rumours of my virtue They moved her not at all I changed my style to silver I changed my clothed to black And where I would surrender Now I would attack I stormed the old casino For the money and the flesh And I myself decided What was rotten and what was fresh And men to do my bidding And broken bones to teach The value of my pardon The shadow of my reach But no, I could not touch her With such a heavy hand Her star beyond my order Her nakedness unmanned I came so far for beauty I left so much behind My patience and my family My masterpiece unsigned

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Un Canadien Errant (The Lost Canadian)
(by Antoine Gerin-Lajoie) Un Canadien Errant Banni de ses foyers, Parcourait en pleurant Des pays etrangers. Parcourait en pleurant Des pays etrangers. Un jour, triste et pensif, Assis au bord des flots, Au courant fugitif Il adressa ces mots: Au courant fugitif Il adressa ces mots: "Si tu vois mon pays, Mon pays malheureux, Va dire a mes amis Que je me souviens d'eux. Va dire a mes amis Que je me souviens d'eux. O jours si pleins d'appas, Vous etes disparus... Et ma patrie, helas! Je ne la verrai plus. Et ma patrie, helas! Je ne la verrai plus. [A wandering Canadian, banned from his hearths, travelled while crying in foreign lands. travelled while crying in foreign lands.

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One day, sad and pensive, sitting by the flowing waters, to the fleeing current he addressed these words: to the fleeing current he addressed these words: If you see my country, my unhappy country, go tell my friends that I remember them. go tell my friends that I remember them. O days so full of charms, you have vanished... And my native land, alas! I will see it no more. And my native land, alas! I will see it no more.]

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The Traitor
Now the Swan it floated on the English river Ah the Rose of High Romance it opened wide A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer and the judges watched us from the other side I told my mother "Mother I must leave you preserve my room but do not shed a tear Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you it was half my fault and half the atmosphere" But the Rose I sickened with a scarlet fever and the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame She said at last I was her finest lover and if she withered I would be to blame The judges said you missed it by a fraction rise up and brace your troops for the attack Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action Oh see the men of action falling back But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still My falsity had stung me like a hornet The poison sank and it paralysed my will I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers that they had been deserted from above So on battlefields from here to Barcelona I'm listed with the enemies of love And long ago she said "I must be leaving, Ah but keep my body here to lie upon You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping Run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan"

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So daily I renew my idle duty I touch her here and there -- I know my place I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty and people call me traitor to my face

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Our Lady of Solitude
All summer long she touched me She gathered in my soul From many a thorn, from many thickets Her fingers, like a weaver's Quick and cool And the light came from her body And the night went through her grace All summer long she touched me And I knew her, I knew her Face to face And her dress was blue and silver And her words were few and small She is the vessel of the whole wide world Mistress, oh mistress, of us all Dearly dead; Queen of Solitude I thank you with my heart for keeping me so close to thee while so many, oh so many, stood apart And the light came from her body And the night went through her grace All summer long she touched me I knew her, I knew her Face to face

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The Gypsy's Wife
And where, where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight I've heard all the wild reports, they can't be right But whose head is this she's dancing with on the threshing floor whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight? Where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight? Ah the silver knives are flashing in the tired old cafe A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee She says, "My body is the light, my body is the way" I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride's bouquet And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?... Too early for the rainbow, too early for the dove These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood And there is no man or woman who can't be touched But you who come between them will be judged And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?...

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The Smokey Life
I've never seen your eyes so wide I've never seen your appetite quite this occupied Elsewhere is your feast of love I know ... where long ago we agreed to keep it light So lets be married one more night It's light, light enough To let it go It's light enough to let it go Remember when the scenery started fading I held you til you learned to walk on air So don't look down the ground is gone, there's no one waiting anyway The Smoky Life is practiced Everywhere So set your restless heart at ease Take a lesson from these Autumn leaves They waste no time waiting for the snow Don't argue now you'll be late There is nothing to investigate It's light enough, light enough To let it go Light enough to let it go Remember when the scenery started fading I held you til you learned to walk on air So don't look down the ground is gone, there's no one waiting anyway The Smoky Life is practiced everywhere Come on back if the moment lends You can look up all my very closest friends

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Light, light enough To let it go It's light enough to let it go

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Ballad of the Absent Mare
Say a prayer for the cowboy His mare's run away And he'll walk til he finds her His darling, his stray but the river's in flood and the roads are awash and the bridges break up in the panic of loss. And there's nothing to follow There's nowhere to go She's gone like the summer gone like the snow And the crickets are breaking his heart with their song as the day caves in and the night is all wrong Did he dream, was it she who went galloping past and bent down the fern broke open the grass and printed the mud with the iron and the gold that he nailed to her feet when he was the lord And although she goes grazing a minute away he tracks her all night he tracks her all day Oh blind to her presence except to compare his injury here with her punishment there

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Then at home on a branch in the highest tree a songbird sings out so suddenly Ah the sun is warm and the soft winds ride on the willow trees by the river side Oh the world is sweet the world is wide and she's there where the light and the darkness divide and the steam's coming off her she's huge and she's shy and she steps on the moon when she paws at the sky And she comes to his hand but she's not really tame She longs to be lost he longs for the same and she'll bolt and she'll plunge through the first open pass to roll and to feed in the sweet mountain grass Or she'll make a break for the high plateau where there's nothing above and there's nothing below and it's time for the burden it's time for the whip Will she walk through the flame Can he shoot from the hip

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So he binds himself to the galloping mare and she binds herself to the rider there and there is no space but there's left and right and there is no time but there's day and night And he leans on her neck and he whispers low "Whither thou goest I will go" And they turn as one and they head for the plain No need for the whip Ah, no need for the rein Now the clasp of this union who fastens it tight? Who snaps it asunder the very next night Some say the rider Some say the mare Or that love's like the smoke beyond all repair But my darling says "Leonard, just let it go by That old silhouette on the great western sky" So I pick out a tune and they move right along and they're gone like the smoke and they're gone like this song

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Suzanne
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer That you've always been her lover And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you've touched her perfect body with your mind. And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them" But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone And you want to travel with him And you want to travel blind And you think maybe you'll trust him For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

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Now Suzanne takes your hand And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While Suzanne holds the mirror And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that you can trust her For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

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Master Song
I believe that you heard your master sing when I was sick in bed. I suppose that he told you everything that I keep locked away in my head. Your master took you travelling, well at least that's what you said. And now do you come back to bring your prisoner wine and bread? You met him at some temple, where they take your clothes at the door. He was just a numberless man in a chair who'd just come back from the war. And you wrap up his tired face in your hair and he hands you the apple core. Then he touches your lips now so suddenly bare of all the kisses we put on some time before. And he gave you a German Shepherd to walk with a collar of leather and nails, and he never once made you explain or talk about all of the little details, such as who had a word and who had a rock, and who had you through the mails. Now your love is a secret all over the block, and it never stops not even when your master fails. And he took you up in his aeroplane, which he flew without any hands, and you cruised above the ribbons of rain that drove the crowd from the stands. Then he killed the lights in a lonely Lane and, an ape with angel glands, erased the final wisps of pain with the music of rubber bands.

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And now I hear your master sing, you kneel for him to come. His body is a golden string that your body is hanging from. His body is a golden string, my body has grown numb. Oh now you hear your master sing, your shirt is all undone. And will you kneel beside this bed that we polished so long ago, before your master chose instead to make my bed of snow? Your eyes are wild and your knuckles are red and you're speaking far too low. No I can't make out what your master said before he made you go. Then I think you're playing far too rough for a lady who's been to the moon; I've lain by this window long enough to get used to an empty room. And your love is some dust in an old man's cough who is tapping his foot to a tune, and your thighs are a ruin, you want too much, let's say you came back some time too soon. I loved your master perfectly I taught him all that he knew. He was starving in some deep mystery like a man who is sure what is true. And I sent you to him with my guarantee I could teach him something new, and I taught him how you would long for me no matter what he said no matter what you'd do.

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I believe that you heard your master sing while I was sick in bed, I'm sure that he told you everything I must keep locked away in my head. Your master took you travelling, well at least that's what you said, And now do you come back to bring your prisoner wine and bread?

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Winter Lady
Trav'ling lady, stay awhile until the night is over. I'm just a station on your way, I know I'm not your lover. Well I lived with a child of snow when I was a soldier, and I fought every man for her until the nights grew colder. She used to wear her hair like you except when she was sleeping, and then she'd weave it on a loom of smoke and gold and breathing. And why are you so quiet now standing there in the doorway? You chose your journey long before you came upon this highway. Trav'ling lady stay awhile until the night is over. I'm just a station on your way, I know I'm not your lover.

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Stranger Song
It's true that all the men you knew were dealers who said they were through with dealing Every time you gave them shelter I know that kind of man It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender, who is reaching for the sky just to surrender. And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind you find he did not leave you very much not even laughter Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild he'll never need to deal another He was just some Joseph looking for a manger He was just some Joseph looking for a manger And then leaning on your window sill he'll say one day you caused his will to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter And then taking from his wallet an old schedule of trains, he'll say I told you when I came I was a stranger I told you when I came I was a stranger. But now another stranger seems to want you to ignore his dreams as though they were the burden of some other O you've seen that man before his golden arm dispatching cards but now it's rusted from the elbows to the finger And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.

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Ah you hate to see another tired man lay down his hand like he was giving up the holy game of poker And while he talks his dreams to sleep you notice there's a highway that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder. You tell him to come in sit down but something makes you turn around The door is open you can't close your shelter You try the handle of the road It opens do not be afraid It's you my love, you who are the stranger It's you my love, you who are the stranger. Well, I've been waiting, I was sure we'd meet between the trains we're waiting for I think it's time to board another Please understand, I never had a secret chart to get me to the heart of this or any other matter When he talks like this you don't know what he's after When he speaks like this, you don't know what he's after. Let's meet tomorrow if you choose upon the shore, beneath the bridge that they are building on some endless river Then he leaves the platform for the sleeping car that's warm You realize, he's only advertising one more shelter And it comes to you, he never was a stranger And you say ok the bridge or someplace later. And leaning on your window sill he'll say one day you caused his will to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter And then taking from his wallet An old schedule of trains,he'll say I told you when I came I was a stranger I told you when I came I was a stranger
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Sisters of Mercy
Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song. Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long. Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control. It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul. Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned: When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned. Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them. They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem. If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem. When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon. Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon. And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night: We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right, We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

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So Long Marianne
Come over to the window, my little darling, I'd like to try to read your palm. I used to think I was some kind of Gypsy boy before I let you take me home. Now so long, Marianne, it's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. Well you know that I love to live with you, but you make me forget so very much. I forget to pray for the angels and then the angels forget to pray for us. We met when we were almost young deep in the green lilac park. You held on to me like I was a crucifix, as we went kneeling through the dark. Your letters they all say that you're beside me now. Then why do I feel alone? I'm standing on a ledge and your fine spider web is fastening my ankle to a stone. For now I need your hidden love. I'm cold as a new razor blade. You left when I told you I was curious, I never said that I was brave. Oh, you are really such a pretty one. I see you've gone and changed your name again. And just when I climbed this whole mountainside, to wash my eyelids in the rain!

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Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye. I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time, walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me, it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea, but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye. I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

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Stories of the Street
The stories of the street are mine,the Spanish voices laugh. The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas, and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose, yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose. I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come, the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone. But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk, All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us? And where do all these highways go, now that we are free? Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me? O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel, You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal. The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask the nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass. And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite, and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night. O come with me my little one, we will find that farm and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm. And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am, O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb. With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world. We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.

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Teachers
I met a woman long ago her hair the black that black can go, Are you a teacher of the heart? Soft she answered no. I met a girl across the sea, her hair the gold that gold can be, Are you a teacher of the heart? Yes, but not for thee. I met a man who lost his mind in some lost place I had to find, follow me the wise man said, but he walked behind. I walked into a hospital where none was sick and none was well, when at night the nurses left I could not walk at all. Morning came and then came noon, dinner time a scalpel blade lay beside my silver spoon. Some girls wander by mistake into the mess that scalpels make. Are you the teachers of my heart? We teach old hearts to break. One morning I woke up alone, the hospital and the nurses gone. Have I carved enough my Lord? Child, you are a bone. I ate and ate and ate, no I did not miss a plate, well How much do these suppers cost? We'll take it out in hate.

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I spent my hatred everyplace, on every work on every face, someone gave me wishes and I wished for an embrace. Several girls embraced me, then I was embraced by men, Is my passion perfect? No, do it once again. I was handsome I was strong, I knew the words of every song. Did my singing please you? No, the words you sang were wrong. Who is it whom I address, who takes down what I confess? Are you the teachers of my heart? We teach old hearts to rest. Oh teachers are my lessons done? I cannot do another one. They laughed and laughed and said, Well child, are your lessons done? are your lessons done? are your lessons done?

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One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong
I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me. But the room just filled up with mosquitos, they heard that my body was free. Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night and I put it in your little shoe. And then I confess that I tortured the dress that you wore for the world to look through. I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit. Then he wrote himself a prescription, and your name was mentioned in it! Then he locked himself in a library shelf with the details of our honeymoon, and I hear from the nurse that he's gotten much worse and his practice is all in a ruin. I heard of a saint who had loved you, so I studied all night in his school. He taught that the duty of lovers is to tarnish the golden rule. And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure he drowned himself in the pool. His body is gone but back here on the lawn his spirit continues to drool. An Eskimo showed me a movie he'd recently taken of you: the poor man could hardly stop shivering, his lips and his fingers were blue. I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes and I guess he just never got warm. But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice, oh please let me come into the storm.

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Bird on the Wire
Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free. Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee. If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by. If I, if I have been untrue I hope you know it was never to you. Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me. But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee. I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, "You must not ask for so much." And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?" Oh like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

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Story of Isaac
The door it opened slowly, my father he came in, I was nine years old. And he stood so tall above me, his blue eyes they were shining and his voice was very cold. He said, "I've had a vision and you know I'm strong and holy, I must do what I've been told." So he started up the mountain, I was running, he was walking, and his axe was made of gold. Well, the trees they got much smaller, the lake a lady's mirror, we stopped to drink some wine. Then he threw the bottle over. Broke a minute later and he put his hand on mine. Thought I saw an eagle but it might have been a vulture, I never could decide. Then my father built an altar, he looked once behind his shoulder, he knew I would not hide. You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children, you must not do it anymore. A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted by a demon or a god. You who stand above them now, your hatchets blunt and bloody, you were not there before, when I lay upon a mountain and my father's hand was trembling with the beauty of the word.

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And if you call me brother now, forgive me if I inquire, "Just according to whose plan?" When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must, I will help you if I can. When it all comes down to dust I will help you if I must, I will kill you if I can. And mercy on our uniform, man of peace or man of war, the peacock spreads his fan.

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A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes
A bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes were smoking out along the open road; the night was very dark and thick between them, each man beneath his ordinary load. "I'd like to tell my story," said one of them so young and bold, "I'd like to tell my story, before I turn into gold." But no one really could hear him, the night so dark and thick and green; well I guess that these heroes must always live there where you and I have only been. Put out your cigarette, my love, you've been alone too long; and some of us are very hungry now to hear what it is you've done that was so wrong. I sing this for the crickets, I sing this for the army, I sing this for your children and for all who do not need me. "I'd like to tell my story," said one of them so bold, "Oh yes, I'd like to tell my story 'cause you know I feel I'm turning into gold."

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The Partisan
(by Anna Marly/Hy Zaret)

When they poured across the border I was cautioned to surrender, this I could not do; I took my gun and vanished. I have changed my name so often, I've lost my wife and children but I have many friends, and some of them are with me. An old woman gave us shelter, kept us hidden in the garret, then the soldiers came; she died without a whisper. There were three of us this morning I'm the only one this evening but I must go on; the frontiers are my prison. Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing, through the graves the wind is blowing, freedom soon will come; then we'll come from the shadows. Les Allemands e'taient chez moi, [The Germans were at my home] ils me dirent, "Signe toi," [They said, "Sign yourself,"] mais je n'ai pas peur; [But I am not afraid] j'ai repris mon arme. [I have retaken my weapon.] J'ai change' cent fois de nom, [I have changed names a hundred times] j'ai perdu femme et enfants [I have lost wife and children] mais j'ai tant d'amis; [But I have so many friends] j'ai la France entie`re. [I have all of France]

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Un vieil homme dans un grenier [An old man, in an attic] pour la nuit nous a cache', [Hid us for the night] les Allemands l'ont pris; [The Germans captured him] il est mort sans surprise. [He died without surprise.] Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing, through the graves the wind is blowing, freedom soon will come; then we'll come from the shadows.

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Seems So Long Ago, Nancy
It seems so long ago, Nancy was alone, looking ate the Late Late show through a semi-precious stone. In the House of Honesty her father was on trial, in the House of Mystery there was no one at all, there was no one at all. It seems so long ago, none of us were strong; Nancy wore green stockings and she slept with everyone. She never said she'd wait for us although she was alone, I think she fell in love for us in nineteen sixty one, in nineteen sixty one. It seems so long ago, Nancy was alone, a forty five beside her head, an open telephone. We told her she was beautiful, we told her she was free but none of us would meet her in the House of Mystery, the House of Mystery. And now you look around you, see her everywhere, many use her body, many comb her hair. In the hollow of the night when you are cold and numb you hear her talking freely then, she's happy that you've come, she's happy that you've come.

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The Old Revolution
I finally broke into the prison, I found my place in the chain. Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows, all the brave young men they're waiting now to see a signal which some killer will be lighting for pay. Into this furnace I ask you now to venture, you whom I cannot betray. I fought in the old revolution on the side of the ghost and the King. Of course I was very young and I thought that we were winning; I can't pretend I still feel very much like singing as they carry the bodies away. Lately you've started to stutter as though you had nothing to say. To all of my architects let me be traitor. Now let me say I myself gave the order to sleep and to search and to destroy. Yes, you who are broken by power, you who are absent all day, you who are kings for the sake of your children's story, the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money, the hand of your lover is clay.

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The Butcher
I came upon a butcher, he was slaughtering a lamb, I accused him there with his tortured lamb. He said, "Listen to me, child, I am what I am and you, you are my only son." Well, I found a silver needle, I put it into my arm. It did some good, did some harm. But the nights were cold and it almost kept me warm, how come the night is long? I saw some flowers growing up where that lamb fell down; was I supposed to praise my Lord, make some kind of joyful sound? He said, "Listen, listen to me now, I go round and round and you, you are my only child." Do not leave me now, do not leave me now, I'm broken down from a recent fall. Blood upon my body and ice upon my soul, lead on, my son, it is your world.

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You Know Who I Am
I cannot follow you, my love, you cannot follow me. I am the distance you put between all of the moments that we will be. You know who I am, you've stared at the sun, well I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one. Sometimes I need you naked, sometimes I need you wild, I need you to carry my children in and I need you to kill a child. If you should ever track me down I will surrender there and I will leave with you one broken man whom I will teach you to repair. I cannot follow you, my love, you cannot follow me. I am the distance you put between all of the moments that we will be.

43

Lady Midnight
I came by myself to a very crowded place; I was looking for someone who had lines in her face. I found her there but she was past all concern; I asked her to hold me, I said, "Lady, unfold me," but she scorned me and she told me I was dead and I could never return. Well, I argued all night like so many have before, saying, "Whatever you give me, I seem to need so much more." Then she pointed at me where I kneeled on her floor, she said, "Don't try to use me or slyly refuse me, just win me or lose me, it is this that the darkness is for." I cried, "Oh, Lady Midnight, I fear that you grow old, the stars eat your body and the wind makes you cold." "If we cry now," she said, "it will just be ignored." So I walked through the morning, sweet early morning, I could hear my lady calling, "You've won me, you've won me, my lord, you've won me, you've won me, my lord, yes, you've won me, you've won me, my lord, ah, you've won me, you've won me, my lord, ah, you've won me, you've won me, my lord."

44

Tonight Will Be Fine
Sometimes I find I get to thinking of the past. We swore to each other then that our love would surely last. You kept right on loving, I went on a fast, now I am too thin and your love is too vast. But I know from your eyes and I know from your smile that tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine, will be fine for a while. I choose the rooms that I live in with care, the windows are small and the walls almost bare, there's only one bed and there's only one prayer; I listen all night for your step on the stair. But I know from your eyes and I know from your smile that tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine, will be fine for a while. Oh sometimes I see her undressing for me, she's the soft naked lady love meant her to be and she's moving her body so brave and so free. If I've got to remember that's a fine memory. And I know from her eyes and I know from her smile that tonight will be fine, will be fine, will be fine, will be fine for a while.

45

Avalanche
Well I stepped into an avalanche, it covered up my soul; when I am not this hunchback that you see, I sleep beneath the golden hill. You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn, learn to serve me well. You strike my side by accident as you go down for your gold. The cripple here that you clothe and feed is neither starved nor cold; he does not ask for your company, not at the centre, the centre of the world. When I am on a pedestal, you did not raise me there. Your laws do not compel me to kneel grotesque and bare. I myself am the pedestal for this ugly hump at which you stare. You who wish to conquer pain, you must learn what makes me kind; the crumbs of love that you offer me, they're the crumbs I've left behind. Your pain is no credential here, it's just the shadow, shadow of my wound. I have begun to long for you, I who have no greed; I have begun to ask for you, I who have no need. You say you've gone away from me, but I can feel you when you breathe.

46

Do not dress in those rags for me, I know you are not poor; you don't love me quite so fiercely now when you know that you are not sure, it is your turn, beloved, it is your flesh that I wear.

47

Last Year's Man
The rain falls down on last year's man, that's a jew's harp on the table, that's a crayon in his hand. And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolled far past the stems of thumbtacks that still throw shadows on the wood. And the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend and all the rain falls down amen on the works of last year's man. I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark oh one by one she had to tell them that her name was Joan of Arc. I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while; I want to thank you, Joan of Arc, for treating me so well. And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight; all these wounded boys you lie beside, goodnight, my friends, goodnight. I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived; Bethlehem the bridegroom, Babylon the bride. Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me, and Bethlehem inflamed us both like the shy one at some orgy. And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil that I had to draw aside to see the serpent eat its tail.

48

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain so I hang upon my altar and I hoist my axe again. And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began when Jesus was the honeymoon and Cain was just the man. And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin that the wilderness is gathering all its children back again. The rain falls down on last year's man, an hour has gone by and he has not moved his hand. But everything will happen if he only gives the word; the lovers will rise up and the mountains touch the ground. But the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend and all the rain falls down amen on the works of last year's man.

49

Dress Rehearsal Rag
Four o'clock in the afternoon and I didn't feel like very much. I said to myself, "Where are you golden boy, where is your famous golden touch?" I thought you knew where all of the elephants lie down, I thought you were the crown prince of all the wheels in Ivory Town. Just take a look at your body now, there's nothing much to save and a bitter voice in the mirror cries, "Hey, Prince, you need a shave." Now if you can manage to get your trembling fingers to behave, why don't you try unwrapping a stainless steel razor blade? That's right, it's come to this, yes it's come to this, and wasn't it a long way down, wasn't it a strange way down? There's no hot water and the cold is running thin. Well, what do you expect from the kind of places you've been living in? Don't drink from that cup, it's all caked and cracked along the rim. That's not the electric light, my friend, that is your vision growing dim. Cover up your face with soap, there, now you're Santa Claus. And you've got a gift for anyone who will give you his applause. I thought you were a racing man, ah, but you couldn't take the pace. That's a funeral in the mirror and it's stopping at your face.

50

That's right, it's come to this, yes it's come to this, and wasn't it a long way down, ah wasn't it a strange way down? Once there was a path and a girl with chestnut hair, and you passed the summers picking all of the berries that grew there; there were times she was a woman, oh, there were times she was just a child, and you held her in the shadows where the raspberries grow wild. And you climbed the twilight mountains and you sang about the view, and everywhere that you wandered love seemed to go along with you. That's a hard one to remember, yes it makes you clench your fist. And then the veins stand out like highways, all along your wrist. And yes it's come to this, it's come to this, and wasn't it a long way down, wasn't it a strange way down? You can still find a job, go out and talk to a friend. On the back of every magazine there are those coupons you can send. Why don't you join the Rosicrucians, they can give you back your hope, you can find your love with diagrams on a plain brown envelope. But you've used up all your coupons except the one that seems to be written on your wrist along with several thousand dreams.

51

Now Santa Claus comes forward, that's a razor in his mit; and he puts on his dark glasses and he shows you where to hit; and then the cameras pan, the stand in stunt man, dress rehearsal rag, it's just the dress rehearsal rag, you know this dress rehearsal rag, it's just a dress rehearsal rag.

52

Diamonds In the Mine
The woman in blue, she's asking for revenge, the man in white -- that's you -- says he has no friends. The river is swollen up with rusty cans and the trees are burning in your promised land. And there are no letters in the mailbox, and there are no grapes upon the vine, and there are no chocolates in the boxes anymore, and there are no diamonds in the mine. Well, you tell me that your lover has a broken limb, you say you're kind of restless now and it's on account of him. Well, I saw the man in question, it was just the other night, he was eating up a lady where the lions and Christians fight. And there are no letters in the mailbox and there are no grapes upon the vine, and there are no chocolates in the boxes anymore, and there are no diamonds in the mine. (You tell them now) Ah, there is no comfort in the covens of the witch, some very clever doctor went and sterilized the bitch, and the only man of energy, yes the revolution's pride, he trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child. And there are no letters in the mailbox, oh no, there are no, no grapes upon your vine, and there are, there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore, and there are no diamonds in your mine. And there are no letters in the mailbox, and there are no grapes upon the vine, and there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore, and there are no diamonds in your mine.

53

Love Calls You By Your Name
You thought that it could never happen to all the people that you became, your body lost in legend, the beast so very tame. But here, right here, between the birthmark and the stain, between the ocean and your open vein, between the snowman and the rain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name. The women in your scrapbook whom you still praise and blame, you say they chained you to your fingernails and you climb the halls of fame. Oh but here, right here, between the peanuts and the cage, between the darkness and the stage, between the hour and the age, once again, once again, love calls you by your name. Shouldering your loneliness like a gun that you will not learn to aim, you stumble into this movie house, then you climb, you climb into the frame. Yes, and here, right here between the moonlight and the lane, between the tunnel and the train, between the victim and his stain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name.

54

I leave the lady meditating on the very love which I, I do not wish to claim, I journey down the hundred steps, but the street is still the very same. And here, right here, between the dancer and his cane, between the sailboat and the drain, between the newsreel and your tiny pain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name. Where are you, Judy, where are you, Anne? Where are the paths your heroes came? Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away, was I, was I only limping, was I really lame? Oh here, come over here, between the windmill and the grain, between the sundial and the chain, between the traitor and her pain, once again, once again, love calls you by your name.

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Famous Blue Raincoat
It's four in the morning, the end of December I'm writing you now just to see if you're better New York is cold, but I like where I'm living There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening. I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record. Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair She said that you gave it to her That night that you planned to go clear Did you ever go clear? Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder You'd been to the station to meet every train And you came home without Lili Marlene And you treated my woman to a flake of your life And when she came back she was nobody's wife. Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth One more thin gypsy thief Well I see Jane's awake -She sends her regards. And what can I tell you my brother, my killer What can I possibly say? I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you I'm glad you stood in my way. If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free. Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

56

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair She said that you gave it to her That night that you planned to go clear -Sincerely, L. Cohen

57

Sing Another Song, Boys
(Let's sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter.) Ah his fingernails, I see they're broken, his ships they're all on fire. The moneylender's lovely little daughter ah, she's eaten, she's eaten with desire. She spies him through the glasses from the pawnshops of her wicked father. She hails him with a microphone that some poor singer, just like me, had to leave her. She tempts him with a clarinet, she waves a Nazi dagger. She finds him lying in a heap; she wants to be his woman. He says, "Yes, I might go to sleep but kindly leave, leave the future, leave it open." He stands where it is steep, oh I guess he thinks that he's the very first one, his hand upon his leather belt now like it was the wheel of some big ocean liner. And she will learn to touch herself so well as all the sails burn down like paper. And he has lit the chain of his famous cigarillo. Ah, they'll never, they'll never ever reach the moon, at least not the one that we're after; it's floating broken on the open sea, look out there, my friends, and it carries no survivors. But lets leave these lovers wondering why they cannot have each other, and let's sing another song, boys, this one has grown old and bitter.

58

Joan of Arc
Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc as she came riding through the dark; no moon to keep her armour bright, no man to get her through this very smoky night. She said, "I'm tired of the war, I want the kind of work I had before, a wedding dress or something white to wear upon my swollen appetite." Well, I'm glad to hear you talk this way, you know I've watched you riding every day and something in me yearns to win such a cold and lonesome heroine. "And who are you?" she sternly spoke to the one beneath the smoke. "Why, I'm fire," he replied, "And I love your solitude, I love your pride." "Then fire, make your body cold, I'm going to give you mine to hold," saying this she climbed inside to be his one, to be his only bride. And deep into his fiery heart he took the dust of Joan of Arc, and high above the wedding guests he hung the ashes of her wedding dress. It was deep into his fiery heart he took the dust of Joan of Arc, and then she clearly understood if he was fire, oh then she must be wood. I saw her wince, I saw her cry, I saw the glory in her eye. Myself I long for love and light, but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

59

Minute Prologue
I've been listening to all the dissention. I've been listening to all the pain. And I feel that no matter what I do for you, it's going to come back again. But I think that I can heal it, but I think that I can heal it, I'm a fool, but I think I can heal it with this song.

60

Passing Through
I saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called Calvary "Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?" He said, "Talk of love not hate, things to do - it's getting late. I've so little time and I'm only passing through." Passing through, passing through. Sometimes happy, sometimes blue, glad that I ran into you. Tell the people that you saw me passing through. I saw Adam leave the Garden with an apple in his hand, I said "Now you're out, what are you going to do?" "Plant some crops and pray for rain, maybe raise a little cane. I'm an orphan now, and I'm only passing through." Passing through, passing through ... I was with Washington at Valley Ford, shivering in the snow. I said, "How come the men here suffer like they do?" "Men will suffer, men will fight, even die for what is right even though they know they're only passing through" Passing through, passing through ... I was with Franklin Roosevelt's side on the night before he died. He said, "One world must come out of World War Two" (ah, the fool) "Yankee, Russian, white or tan," he said, "A man is still a man. We're all on one road, and we're only passing through." Passing through, passing through ... (let's do it one more time) Passing through, passing through ...

61

Please Don't Pass Me By (A Disgrace)
I was walking in New York City and I brushed up against the man in front of me. I felt a cardboard placard on his back. And when we passed a streetlight, I could read it, it said "Please don't pass me by - I am blind, but you can see - I've been blinded totally - Please don't pass me by." I was walking along 7th Avenue, when I came to 14th Street I saw on the corner curious mutilations of the human form; it was a school for handicapped people. And there were cripples, and people in wheelchairs and crutches and it was snowing, and I got this sense that the whole city was singing this: Oh please don't pass me by, oh please don't pass me by, for I am blind, but you can see, yes, I've been blinded totally, oh please don't pass me by. And you know as I was walking I thought it was them who were singing it, I thought it was they who were singing it, I thought it was the other who was singing it, I thought it was someone else. But as I moved along I knew it was me, and that I was singing it to myself. It went: Please don't pass me by, oh please don't pass me by, for I am blind, but you can see, well, I've been blinded totally, oh please don't pass me by. Oh please don't pass me by. Now I know that you're sitting there deep in your velvet seats and you're thinking "Uh, he's up there saying something that he thinks about, but I'll never have to sing that song." But I promise you friends, that you're going to be singing this song: it may not be tonight, it may not be tomorrow, but one day you'll be on your knees and I want you to know the words when the time comes. Because you're going to have to sing it to yourself, or to another, or to your brother. You're going to have to learn to sing this song, it goes:

62

Please don't pass me by, ah you don't have to sing this .. not for you. Please don't pass me by, for I am blind, but you can see, yes, I've been blinded totally, oh please don't pass me by. Well I sing this for the Jews and the Gypsies and the smoke that they made. And I sing this for the children of England, their faces so grave. And I sing this for a saviour with no one to save. Hey, won't you be naked for me? Hey, won't you be naked for me? It goes: Please don't pass me by, oh please don't pass me by, for I am blind, but you can see, yes, I've been blinded totally, oh now, please don't pass me by. Now there's nothing that I tell you that will help you connect the blood tortured night with the day that comes next. But I want it to hurt you, I want it to end. Oh, won't you be naked for me? Oh now: Please don't pass me by, oh please don't pass me by, for I am blind, but you can see, but I've been blinded totally, oh, please don't pass me by. Well I sing this song for you Blonde Beasts, I sing this song for you Venuses upon your shells on the foam of the sea. And I sing this for the freaks and the cripples, and the hunchback, and the burned, and the burning, and the maimed, and the broken, and the torn, and all of those that you talk about at the coffee tables, at the meetings, and the demonstrations, on the streets, in your music, in my songs. I mean the real ones that are burning, I mean the real ones that are burning I say, please don't pass me by, oh now, please don't pass me by, for I am blind, yeah but you can see, ah now, I've been blinded totally, oh no, please don't pass me by.

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I know that you still think that its me. I know that you think that there's somebody else. I know that these words aren't yours. But I tell you friends that one day You're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down on your knees, you're going to get down .. Oh, please don't pass me by, oh, please don't pass me by, for I am blind, yeah but you can see, yes, I've been blinded totally, oh, please don't pass me by. Well you know I have my songs and I have my poems. I have my book and I have the army, and sometimes I have your applause. I make some money, but you know what my friends, I'm still out there on the corner. I'm with the freaks, I'm with the hunted, I'm with the maimed, yes I'm with the torn, I'm with the down, I'm with the poor. Come on now ... Ah, please don't pass me by, well I've got to go now friends, but, please don't pass me by, for I am blind, yeah but you can see, oh, I've been blinded, I've been blinded totally, oh now, please don't pass me by.

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Now I want to take away my dignity, yes take my dignity. My friends, take my dignity, take my form, take my style, take my honour, take my courage, take my time, take my time, .. time .. 'Cause you know I'm with you singing this song. And I wish you would, I wish you would, I wish you would go home with someone else. Wish you'd go home with someone else. I wish you'd go home with someone else. Don't be the person that you came with. Oh, don't be the person that you came with, Oh don't be the person that you came with. Ah, I'm not going to be. I can't stand him. I can't stand who I am. That's why I've got to get down on my knees. Because I can't make it by myself. I'm not by myself anymore because the man I was before he was a tyrant, he was a slave, he was in chains, he was broken and then he sang: Oh, please don't pass me by, oh, please don't pass me by, for I am blind, yes I am blind, Oh but you can see, yes, I've been blinded totally, oh, please don't pass me by. Well I hope I see you out there on the corner. Yeah I hope as I go by that I hear you whisper with the breeze. Because I'm going to leave you now, I'm going to find me someone new. Find someone new. And please don't pass me by.

65

Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria, My father and all his tobacco loved you, I love you too in all your forms, the slim and lovely virgin floating among German beer, the mean governess of the huge pink maps, the solitary mourner of a prince. Queen Victoria, I am cold and rainy, I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station, I feel like an empty cast iron exhibition, I want ornaments on everything, because my love, she gone with other boys. Queen Victoria, do you have a punishment under the white lace, will you be short with her, will you make her read those little Bibles, will you spank her with a mechanical corset. I want her pure as power, I want her skin slightly musty with petticoats will you wash the easy bidet out of her head? Queen Victoria, I'm not much nourished by modern love, will you come into my life with your sorrow and your black carriages, And your perfect memories. Queen Victoria, the Twentieth Century belongs to you and me. Let us be two severe giants not less lonely for our partnership, who discolour test tubes in the halls of Science, who turn up unwelcome at every World's Fair, heavy with proverbs and corrections, confusing the star-dazed tourists with our incomparable sense of loss.

66

Is This What You Wanted?
You were the promise at dawn, I was the morning after. You were Jesus Christ my Lord, I was the money lender. You were the sensitive woman, I was the very reverend Freud. You were the manual orgasm, I was the dirty little boy. And is this what you wanted to live in a house that is haunted by the ghost of you and me? You were Marlon Brando, I was Steve McQueen. You were K.Y. Jelly, I was Vaseline. You were the father of modern medicine, I was Mr. Clean. You where the whore and the beast of Babylon, I was Rin Tin Tin. You got old and wrinkled, I stayed seventeen. You lusted after so many, I lay here with one. You defied your solitude, I came through alone. You said you could never love me, I undid your gown.

67

Chelsea Hotel #1
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel You were taking so brave and so free Giving me head on the unmade bed While the limousines wait in the street (And) Those were the reasons and that was New York I was running for the money and the flesh That was called love for the workers in song Probably (It) still is for those of us/them left But You got away, didn't you baby You just threw it all to the ground You got away, they can't pay you now For mailing your sweet little song I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel In the winter of sixty-seven My friends of that year they were all trying to go queer And me I was just getting even And me I was just getting even And me I was just getting even (And) those were the reasons and that was New York I was running for the money and the flesh That was called love for the workers in song Probably (It) still is for those of us/them left But you got away, didn't you baby You just threw it all to the ground You got away they can't pay you now For making your sweet little sound

68

Chelsea Hotel #2
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet, giving me head on the unmade bed, while the limousines wait in the street. Those were the reasons and that was New York, we were running for the money and the flesh. And that was called love for the workers in song probably still is for those of them left. Ah but you got away, didn't you babe, you just turned your back on the crowd, you got away, I never once heard you say, I need you, I don't need you, I need you, I don't need you and all of that jiving around. I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel you were famous, your heart was a legend. You told me again you preferred handsome men but for me you would make an exception. And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music." I don't mean to suggest that I loved you the best, I can't keep track of each fallen robin. I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, that's all, I don't even think of you that often.

69

Lover Lover Lover
I asked my father, I said, "Father change my name." The one I'm using now it's covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame. Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me, yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. He said, "I locked you in this body, I meant it as a kind of trial. You can use it for a weapon, or to make some woman smile." Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. "Then let me start again," I cried, "please let me start again, I want a face that's fair this time, I want a spirit that is calm." Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. "I never never turned aside," he said, "I never walked away. It was you who built the temple, it was you who covered up my face." Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. And may the spirit of this song, may it rise up pure and free. May it be a shield for you, a shield against the enemy. Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

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Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

71

Field Commander Cohen
Field Commander Cohen, he was our most important spy. Wounded in the line of duty, parachuting acid into diplomatic cocktail parties, urging Fidel Castro to abandon fields and castles. Leave it all and like a man, come back to nothing special, such as waiting rooms and ticket lines, silver bullet suicides, and messianic ocean tides, and racial roller-coaster rides and other forms of boredom advertised as poetry. I know you need your sleep now, I know your life's been hard. But many men are falling, where you promised to stand guard. I never asked but I heard you cast your lot along with the poor. But then I overheard your prayer, that you be this and nothing more than just some grateful faithful woman's favourite singing millionaire, the patron Saint of envy and the grocer of despair, working for the Yankee Dollar. Ah, lover come and lie with me, if my lover is who you are, and be your sweetest self awhile until I ask for more, my child. Then let the other selves be wrong, yeah, let them manifest and come till every taste is on the tongue, till love is pierced and love is hung, and every kind of freedom done, then oh, oh my love, oh my love, oh my love, oh my love, oh my love, oh my love.

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Why Dont You Try
Why don't you try to do without him? Why don't you try to live alone? Do you really need his hands for your passion? Do you really need his heart for your throne? Do you need his labour for your baby? Do you need his beast for the bone? Do you need to hold a leash to be a lady? I know you're going to make, make it on your own. Why don't your try to forget him? Just open up your dainty little hand. You know this life is filled with many sweet companions, many satisfying one-night stands. Do you want to be the ditch around a tower? Do you want to be the moonlight in his cave? Do you want to give your blessing to his power as he goes whistling past his daddy, past his daddy's grave. I'd like to take you take you to the ceremony, well, that is if I remember the way. You see Jack and Jill they're going to join their misery, I'm afraid it's time for everyone to pray. You can see they've finally taken cover, they're willing, yeah they're willing to obey. Their vows are difficult, they're for each other, so let nobody put a loophole, a loophole in their way.

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There is a War
There is a war between the rich and poor, a war between the man and the woman. There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't. Why don't you come on back to the war, that's right, get in it, why don't you come on back to the war, it's just beginning. Well I live here with a woman and a child, the situation makes me kind of nervous. Yes, I rise up from her arms, she says "I guess you call this love"; I call it service. Why don't you come on back to the war, don't be a tourist, why don't you come on back to the war, before it hurts us, why don't you come on back to the war, let's all get nervous. You cannot stand what I've become, you much prefer the gentleman I was before. I was so easy to defeat, I was so easy to control, I didn't even know there was a war. Why don't you come on back to the war, don't be embarrassed, why don't you come on back to the war, you can still get married. There is a war between the rich and poor, a war between the man and the woman. There is a war between the left and right, a war between the black and white, a war between the odd and the even. Why don't you come on back to the war, pick up your tiny burden, why don't you come on back to the war, let's all get even, why don't you come on back to the war, can't you hear me speaking?

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A Singer Must Die
Now the courtroom is quiet, but who will confess. Is it true you betrayed us? The answer is Yes. Then read me the list of the crimes that are mine, I will ask for the mercy that you love to decline. And all the ladies go moist, and the judge has no choice, a singer must die for the lie in his voice. And I thank you, I thank you for doing your duty, you keepers of truth, you guardians of beauty. Your vision is right, my vision is wrong, I'm sorry for smudging the air with my song. Oh, the night it is thick, my defences are hid in the clothes of a woman I would like to forgive, in the rings of her silk, in the hinge of her thighs, where I have to go begging in beauty's disguise. Oh goodnight, goodnight, my night after night, my night after night, after night, after night, after night, after night. I am so afraid that I listen to you, your sun glassed protectors they do that to you. It's their ways to detain, their ways to disgrace, their knee in your balls and their fist in your face. Yes and long live the state by whoever it's made, sir, I didn't see nothing, I was just getting home late.

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I Tried To Leave You
I tried to leave you, I don't deny I closed the book on us, at least a hundred times. I'd wake up every morning by your side. The years go by, you lose your pride. The baby's crying, so you do not go outside, and all your work it's right before your eyes. Goodnight, my darling, I hope you're satisfied, the bed is kind of narrow, but my arms are open wide. And here's a man still working for your smile.

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Who By Fire
And who by fire, who by water, who in the sunshine, who in the night time, who by high ordeal, who by common trial, who in your merry merry month of may, who by very slow decay, and who shall I say is calling? And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate, who in these realms of love, who by something blunt, and who by avalanche, who by powder, who for his greed, who for his hunger, and who shall I say is calling? And who by brave assent, who by accident, who in solitude, who in this mirror, who by his lady's command, who by his own hand, who in mortal chains, who in power, and who shall I say is calling?

77

Take This Longing
Many men have loved the bells you fastened to the rein, and everyone who wanted you they found what they will always want again. Your beauty lost to you yourself just as it was lost to them. Oh take this longing from my tongue, whatever useless things these hands have done. Let me see your beauty broken down like you would do for one you love. Your body like a searchlight my poverty revealed, I would like to try your charity until you cry, "Now you must try my greed." And everything depends upon how near you sleep to me Just take this longing from my tongue all the lonely things my hands have done. Let me see your beauty broken down like you would do for one your love. Hungry as an archway through which the troops have passed, I stand in ruins behind you, with your winter clothes, your broken sandal straps. I love to see you naked over there especially from the back. Oh take this longing from my tongue, all the useless things my hands have done, untie for me your hired blue gown, like you would do for one that you love.

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You're faithful to the better man, I'm afraid that he left. So let me judge your love affair in this very room where I have sentenced mine to death. I'll even wear these old laurel leaves that he's shaken from his head. Just take this longing from my tongue, all the useless things my hands have done, let me see your beauty broken down, like you would do for one you love. Like you would do for one you love.

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Leaving Green Sleeves
Alas, my love, you did me wrong, to cast me out discourteously, for I have loved you so long, delighting in your very company. Now if you intend to show me disdain, don't you know it all the more enraptures me, for even so I still remain your lover in captivity. Green sleeves, you're all alone, the leaves have fallen, the men have gone. Green sleeves, there's no one home, not even the Lady Green Sleeves I sang my songs, I told my lies, to lie between your matchless thighs. And ain't it fine, ain't it wild to finally end our exercise Then I saw you naked in the early dawn, oh, I hoped you would be someone new. I reached for you but you were gone, so lady I'm going too. Green sleeves, you're all alone, the leaves have fallen, the men have all gone home. Green sleeves, it's so easily done, leaving the Lady Green Sleeves.

80

True Love Leaves No Traces
As the mist leaves no scar On the dark green hill So my body leaves no scar On you and never will Through windows in the dark The children come, the children go Like arrows with no targets Like shackles made of snow True love leaves no traces If you and I are one It's lost in our embraces Like stars against the sun As a falling leaf may rest A moment on the air So your head upon my breast So my hand upon your hair And many nights endure Without a moon or star So we will endure When one is gone and far True love leaves no traces If you and I are one It's lost in our embraces Like stars against the sun

81

Iodine
I needed you, I knew I was in danger of losing what I used to think was mine You let me love you till I was a failure, You let me love you till I was a failure -Your beauty on my bruise like iodine I asked you if a man could be forgiven And though I failed at love, was this a crime? You said, Don't worry, don't worry, darling You said, Don't worry, don't you worry, darling There are many ways a man can serve his time You covered up that place I could not master It wasn't dark enough to shut my eyes So I was with you, O sweet compassion Yes I was with you, O sweet compassion Compassion with the sting of iodine Your saintly kisses reeked of iodine Your fragrance with a fume of iodine And pity in the room like iodine Your sister fingers burned like iodine And all my wanton lust was iodine My masquerade of trust was iodine And everywhere the flare of iodine

82

Paper Thin Hotel
The walls of this hotel are paper-thin Last night I heard you making love to him The struggle mouth to mouth and limb to limb The grunt of unity when he came in I stood there with my ear against the wall I was not seized by jealousy at all In fact a burden lifted from my soul I learned that love was out of my control A heavy burden lifted from my soul I heard that love was out of my control I listened to your kisses at the door I never heard the world so clear before You ran your bath and you began to sing I felt so good I couldn't feel a thing And I can't wait to tell you to your face And I can't wait for you to take my place You are The Naked Angel In My Heart You are The Woman With Her Legs Apart It's written on the walls of this hotel You go to heaven once you've been to hell A heavy burden lifted from my soul I heard that love was out of my control

83

Memories
Frankie Lane, he was singing Jezebel I pinned an Iron Cross to my lapel I walked up to the tallest and the blondest girl I said, Look, you don't know me now but very soon you will So won't you let me see I said "won't you let me see" I said "won't you let me see Your naked body?" Just dance me to the dark side of the gym Chances are I'll let you do most anything I know you're hungry, I can hear it in your voice And there are many parts of me to touch, you have your choice Ah but no you cannot see She said "no you cannot see" She said "no you cannot see My naked body" So We're dancing close, the band is playing Stardust Balloons and paper streamers floating down on us She says, You've got a minute left to fall in love In solemn moments such as this I have put my trust And all my faith to see I said all my faith to see I said all my faith to see Her naked body

84

I Left A Woman Waiting
I left a woman waiting I met her sometime later She said, I see your eyes are dead What happened to you, lover? What happened to you, my lover? What happened to you, lover? What happened to you? And since she spoke the truth to me I tried to answer truthfully Whatever happened to my eyes Happened to your beauty Happened to your beauty What happened to your beauty Happened to me We took ourselves to someone's bed And there we fell together Quick as dogs and truly dead were we And free as running water Free as running water Free as running water Free as you and me The way it's got to be The way it's got to be, lover

85

Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On
I was born in a beauty salon My father was a dresser of hair My mother was a girl you could call on When you called she was always there When you called she was always there When you called she was always there When you called she was always there When you called she was always there Ah but don't go home with your hard-on It will only drive you insane You can't shake it (or break it) with your Motown You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain I've looked behind all of the faces That smile you down to you knees And the lips that say, Come on, taste us And when you try to they make you say Please When you try to they make you say Please When you try to they make you say Please When you try to they make you say Please When you try to they make you say Please Here come's your bride with her veil on Approach her, you wretch, if you dare Approach her, you ape with your tail on Once you have her she'll always be there Once you have her she'll always be there Once you have her she'll always be there Once you have her she'll always be there Once you have her she'll always be there

86

So I work in that same beauty salon I'm chained to the old masquerade The lipstick, the shadow, the silicone I follow my father's trade I follow my father's trade Yes I follow my father's trade Yes I follow my father's trade Yes I follow my father's trade Ah but don't go home with your hard-on It will only drive you insane You can't shake it (or break it) with your Motown You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain You can't melt it down in the rain

87

Fingerprints
I touched you once too often Now I don't know who I am My fingerprints were missing When I wiped away the jam Yes I called my fingerprints all night But they don't seem to care The last time that I saw them They were leafing through your hair Fingerprints, fingerprints Where are you now my fingerprints? Yeah I thought I'd leave this morning So I emptied out your drawer A hundred thousand fingerprints They floated to the floor You know you hardly stopped to pick them up You don't care what you lose Ah you don't even seem to know Whose fingerprints are whose Fingerprints, fingerprints Where are you now my fingerprints? And now you want to marry me You want to take me down the aisle You want to throw confetti fingerprints You know that's not my style O sure I'd like to marry you But I can't face the dawn With any girl who knew me When my fingerprints were on Fingerprints, fingerprints Where are you now my fingerprints?

88

Fingerprints, oh fingerprints Where are you now my fingerprints?

89

Death of a Ladies' Man
Ah the man she wanted all her life was hanging by a thread "I never even knew how much I wanted you," she said. His muscles they were numbered and his style was obsolete. "O baby, I have come too late." She knelt beside his feet. "I'll never see a face like yours in years of men to come I'll never see such arms again in wrestling or in love." And all his virtues burning in the smoky Holocaust She took unto herself most everything her lover lost Now the master of this landscape he was standing at the view with a sparrow of St. Francis that he was preaching to She beckoned to the sentry of his high religious mood She said, "I'll make a place between my legs, I'll show you solitude." He offered her an orgy in a many mirrored room He promised her protection for the issue of her womb She moved her body hard against a sharpened metal spoon She stopped the bloody rituals of passage to the moon She took his much admired oriental frame of mind and the heart-of-darkness alibi his money hides behind She took his blonde madonna and his monastery wine -"This mental space is occupied and everything is mine." He tried to make a final stand beside the railway track She said, "The art of longing's over and it's never coming back." She took his tavern parliament, his cap, his cocky dance, she mocked his female fashions and his working-class moustache. The last time that I saw him he was trying hard to get a woman's education but he's not a woman yet And the last time that I saw her she was living with some boy who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy.

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So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far. It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far. It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

91

Dance Me To The End Of Love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon Show me slowly what I only know the limits of Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the children who are asking to be born Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn Dance me to the end of love Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love Dance me to the end of love

92

Coming Back to You
Maybe I'm still hurting I can't turn the other cheek But you know that I still love you It's just that I can't speak I looked for you in everyone And they called me on that too I lived alone but I was only Coming back to you Ah they're shutting down the factory now Just when all the bills are due And the fields they're under lock and key Tho' the rain and the sun come through And springtime starts but then it stops In the name of something new And all the senses rise against this Coming back to you And they're handing down my sentence now And I know what I must do Another mile of silence while I'm Coming back to you There are many in your life And many still to be Since you are a shining light There's many that you'll see But I have to deal with envy When you choose the precious few Who've left their pride on the other side of Coming back to you

93

Even in your arms I know I'll never get it right Even when you bend to give me Comfort in the night I've got to have your word on this Or none of it is true And all I've said was just instead of Coming back to you

94

The Law
How many times did you call me And I knew it was late I left everybody But I never went straight I don't claim to be guilty But I do understand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand Now my heart's like a blister From doing what I do If the moon has a sister It's got to be you I'm going to miss you forever Tho' it's not what I planned There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand Now the deal has been dirty Since dirty began I'm not asking for mercy Not from the man You just don't ask for mercy While you're still on the stand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand I don't claim to be guilty Guilty's too grand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand

95

That's all I can say, baby That's all I can say It wasn't for nothing That they put me away I fell with my angel Down the chain of command There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand There's a Law, there's an Arm, there's a Hand

96

The Night Comes On
I went down to the place Where I knew she lay waiting Under the marble and the snow I said, Mother I'm frightened The thunder and the lightning I'll never come through this alone She said, I'll be with you My shawl wrapped around you My hand on your head when you go And the night came on It was very calm I wanted the night to go on and on But she said, Go back to the World We were fighting in Egypt When they signed this agreement That nobody else had to die There was this terrible sound And my father went down With a terrible wound in his side He said, Try to go on Take my books, take my gun Remember, my son, how they lied And the night comes on It's very calm I'd like to pretend that my father was wrong But you don't want to lie, not to the young

97

We were locked in this kitchen I took to religion And I wondered how long she would stay I needed so much To have nothing to touch I've always been greedy that way But my son and my daughter Climbed out of the water Crying, Papa, you promised to play And they lead me away To the great surprise It's Papa, don't peek, Papa, cover your eyes And they hide, they hide in the World Now I look for her always I'm lost in this calling I'm tied to the threads of some prayer Saying, When will she summon me When will she come to me What must I do to prepare When she bends to my longing Like a willow, like a fountain She stands in the luminous air And the night comes on And it's very calm I lie in her arms and says, When I'm gone I'll be yours, yours for a song Now the crickets are singing The vesper bells ringing The cat's curled asleep in his chair I'll go down to Bill's Bar I can make it that far And I'll see if my friends are still there Yes, and here's to the few Who forgive what you do And the fewer who don't even care And the night comes on It's very calm I want to cross over, I want to go home But she says, Go back, go back to the World

98

Hallelujah
Now I've heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this The fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Your faith was strong but you needed proof You saw her bathing on the roof Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her She tied you To a kitchen chair She broke your throne, and she cut your hair And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah You say I took the name in vain I don't even know the name But if I did, well really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light In every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah I did my best, it wasn't much I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you And even though

99

It all went wrong I'll stand before the Lord of Song With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah, Hallelujah Hallelujah

100

Hallelujah II.
Baby, I've been here before. I know this room, I've walked this floor. I used to live alone before I knew you. Yeah I've seen your flag on the marble arch, But listen, love is not some kind of victory march, No it's a cold and it's a very broken Hallelujah. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, (Hallelujah...) There was a time you let me know What's really going on below, Ah but now you never show it to me, do you? Yeah but I remember, yeah when I moved in you, And the holy dove, she was moving too, Yes every single breath that we drew was Hallelujah. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Maybe there's a God above, As for me, all I've ever seemed to learn from love Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you. Yeah but it's not a complaint that you hear tonight, It's not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light No it's a cold and it's a very lonely Hallelujah. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. I did my best, it wasn't much. I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch. I've told the truth, I didn't come all this way to fool you. Yeah even tough it all went wrong I'll stand right here before the Lord of Song With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

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Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

102

The Captain
Now the Captain called me to his bed He fumbled for my hand "Take these silver bars," he said "I'm giving you command." "Command of what, there's no one here There's only you and me -All the rest are dead or in retreat Or with the enemy." "Complain, complain, that's all you've done Ever since we lost If it's not the Crucifixion Then it's the Holocaust." "May Christ have mercy on your soul For making such a joke Amid these hearts that burn like coal And the flesh that rose like smoke." "I know that you have suffered, lad, But suffer this awhile: Whatever makes a soldier sad Will make a killer smile." "I'm leaving, Captain, I must go There's blood upon your hand But tell me, Captain, if you know Of a decent place to stand." "There is no decent place to stand In a massacre; But if a woman take your hand Go and stand with her." "I left a wife in Tennessee And a baby in Saigon -I risked my life, but not to hear Some country-western song."

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"Ah but if you cannot raise your love To a very high degree, Then you're just the man I've been thinking of -So come and stand with me." "Your standing days are done," I cried, "You'll rally me no more. I don't even know what side We fought on, or what for." "I'm on the side that's always lost Against the side of Heaven I'm on the side of Snake-eyes tossed Against the side of Seven. And I've read the Bill of Human Rights And some of it was true But there wasn't any burden left So I'm laying it on you." Now the Captain he was dying But the Captain wasn't hurt The silver bars were in my hand I pinned them to my shirt.

104

Hunter's Lullaby
Your father's gone a-hunting He's deep in the forest so wild And he cannot take his wife with him He cannot take his child Your father's gone a-hunting In the quicksand and the clay And a woman cannot follow him Although she knows the way Your father's gone a-hunting Through the silver and the glass Where only greed can enter But spirit, spirit cannot pass Your father's gone a-hunting For the beast we'll never cannot bind And he leaves a baby sleeping And his blessings all behind Your father's gone a-hunting And he's lost his lucky charm And he's lost the guardian heart That keeps the hunter from the harm Your father's gone a-hunting He asked me to say goodbye And he warned me not to stop him I wouldn't, I wouldn't even try

105

Heart With No Companion
I greet you from the other side Of sorrow and despair With a love so vast and shattered It will reach you everywhere And I sing this for the captain Whose ship has not been built For the mother in confusion Her cradle still unfilled For the heart with no companion For the soul without a king For the prima ballerina Who cannot dance to anything Through the days of shame that are coming Through the nights of wild distress Tho' your promise count for nothing You must keep it nonetheless You must keep it for the captain Whose ship has not been built For the mother in confusion Her cradle still unfilled

106

If It Be Your Will
If it be your will That I speak no more And my voice be still As it was before I will speak no more I shall abide until I am spoken for If it be your will If it be your will That a voice be true From this broken hill I will sing to you From this broken hill All your praises they shall ring If it be your will To let me sing From this broken hill All your praises they shall ring If it be your will To let me sing If it be your will If there is a choice Let the rivers fill Let the hills rejoice Let your mercy spill On all these burning hearts in hell If it be your will To make us well

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And draw us near And bind us tight All your children here In their rags of light In our rags of light All dressed to kill And end this night If it be your will If it be your will.

108

First We Take Manhattan
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin I'm guided by a signal in the heavens I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin I'd really like to live beside you, baby I love your body and your spirit and your clothes But you see that line there moving through the station? I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin I don't like your fashion business mister And I don't like these drugs that keep you thin I don't like what happened to my sister First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin I'd really like to live beside you, baby ... And I thank you for those items that you sent me The monkey and the plywood violin I practiced every night, now I'm ready First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin I am guided Ah remember me, I used to live for music Remember me, I brought your groceries in Well it's Father's Day and everybody's wounded First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

109

Aint No Cure For Love
I loved you for a long, long time I know this love is real It don't matter how it all went wrong That don't change the way I feel And I can't believe that time's Gonna heal this wound I'm speaking of There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure for love I'm aching for you baby I can't pretend I'm not I need to see you naked In your body and your thought I've got you like a habit And I'll never get enough There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure for love There ain't no cure for love There ain't no cure for love All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky The holy books are open wide The doctors working day and night But they'll never ever find that cure for love There ain't no drink no drug (Ah tell them, angels) There's nothing pure enough to be a cure for love I see you in the subway and I see you on the bus I see you lying down with me, I see you waking up I see your hand, I see your hair Your bracelets and your brush And I call to you, I call to you But I don't call soft enough There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure for love

110

I walked into this empty church I had no place else to go When the sweetest voice I ever heard, whispered to my soul I don't need to be forgiven for loving you so much It's written in the scriptures It's written there in blood I even heard the angels declare it from above There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure, There ain't no cure for love There ain't no cure for love There ain't no cure for love All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky The holy books are open wide The doctors working day and night But they'll never ever find that cure, That cure for love

111

Everybody Knows
(co-written by Sharon Robinson)

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died Everybody talking to their pockets Everybody wants a box of chocolates And a long stem rose Everybody knows Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows

112

And everybody knows that it's now or never Everybody knows that it's me or you And everybody knows that you live forever Ah when you've done a line or two Everybody knows the deal is rotten Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton For your ribbons and bows And everybody knows And everybody knows that the Plague is coming Everybody knows that it's moving fast Everybody knows that the naked man and woman Are just a shining artifact of the past Everybody knows the scene is dead But there's gonna be a meter on your bed That will disclose What everybody knows And everybody knows that you're in trouble Everybody knows what you've been through From the bloody cross on top of Calvary To the beach of Malibu Everybody knows it's coming apart Take one last look at this Sacred Heart Before it blows And everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Oh everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows

113

Im Your Man
If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you If you want a partner Take my hand Or if you want to strike me down in anger Here I stand I'm your man If you want a boxer I will step into the ring for you And if you want a doctor I'll examine every inch of you If you want a driver Climb inside Or if you want to take me for a ride You know you can I'm your man Ah, the moon's too bright The chain's too tight The beast won't go to sleep I've been running through these promises to you That I made and I could not keep Ah but a man never got a woman back Not by begging on his knees Or I'd crawl to you baby And I'd fall at your feet And I'd howl at your beauty Like a dog in heat And I'd claw at your heart And I'd tear at your sheet I'd say please, please I'm your man

114

And if you've got to sleep A moment on the road I will steer for you And if you want to work the street alone I'll disappear for you If you want a father for your child Or only want to walk with me a while Across the sand I'm your man If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you

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Take This Waltz
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry There's a lobby with nine hundred windows There's a tree where the doves go to die There's a piece that was torn from the morning And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay Take this waltz, take this waltz Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws Oh I want you, I want you, I want you On a chair with a dead magazine In the cave at the tip of the lily In some hallways where love's never been On a bed where the moon has been sweating In a cry filled with footsteps and sand Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay Take this waltz, take this waltz Take its broken waist in your hand This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz With its very own breath of brandy and Death Dragging its tail in the sea There's a concert hall in Vienna Where your mouth had a thousand reviews There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking They've been sentenced to death by the blues Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture With a garland of freshly cut tears? Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay Take this waltz, take this waltz Take this waltz it's been dying for years

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There's an attic where children are playing Where I've got to lie down with you soon In a dream of Hungarian lanterns In the mist of some sweet afternoon And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow All your sheep and your lilies of snow Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay Take this waltz, take this waltz With its "I'll never forget you, you know!" And I'll dance with you in Vienna I'll be wearing a river's disguise The hyacinth wild on my shoulder, My mouth on the dew of your thighs And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, With the photographs there, and the moss And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty My cheap violin and my cross And you'll carry me down on your dancing To the pools that you lift on your wrist Oh my love, Oh my love Take this waltz, take this waltz It's yours now. It's all that there is

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Jazz Police
Can you tell me why the bells are ringing? Nothing's happened in a million years I've been sitting here since Wednesday morning Wednesday morning can't believe my ears Jazz police are looking through my folders Jazz police are talking to my niece Jazz police have got their final orders Jazzer, drop your axe, it's Jazz police! Jesus taken serious by the many Jesus taken joyous by a few Jazz police are paid by J.P. Getty Jazzers paid by J. Paul Getty II Jazz police I hear you calling Jazz police I feel so blue Jazz police I think I'm falling, I'm falling for you Wild as any freedom loving racist I applaud the actions of the chief Tell me now oh beautiful and spacious Am I in trouble with the Jazz police? They will never understand our culture They'll never understand the Jazz police Jazz police are working for my mother Blood is thicker margarine than grease Let me be somebody I admire Let me be that muscle down the street Stick another turtle on the fire Guys like me are mad for turtle meat Jazz police I hear you calling Jazz police I feel so blue Jazz police I think I'm falling, I'm falling for you

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I Can't Forget
I stumbled out of bed I got ready for the struggle I smoked a cigarette And I tightened up my gut I said this can't be me Must be my double And I can't forget, I can't forget I can't forget but I don't remember what I'm burning up the road I'm heading down to Phoenix I got this old address Of someone that I knew It was high and fine and free Ah, you should have seen us And I can't forget, I can't forget I can't forget but I don't remember who I'll be there today With a big bouquet of cactus I got this rig that runs on memories And I promise, cross my heart, They'll never catch us But if they do, just tell them it was me Yeah I loved you all my life And that's how I want to end it The summer's almost gone The winter's tuning up Yeah, the summer's gone But a lot goes on forever And I can't forget, I can't forget I can't forget but I don't remember what

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Tower of Song
Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day Oh in the Tower of Song I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get? Hank Williams hasn't answered yet But I hear him coughing all night long A hundred floors above me In the Tower of Song I was born like this, I had no choice I was born with the gift of a golden voice And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond They tied me to this table right here In the Tower of Song So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all I'm standing by the window where the light is strong Ah they don't let a woman kill you Not in the Tower of Song Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor And there's a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong You see, you hear these funny voices In the Tower of Song I see you standing on the other side I don't know how the river got so wide I loved you baby, way back when And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed But I feel so close to everything that we lost We'll never have to lose it again

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Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back There moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone I'll be speaking to you sweetly From a window in the Tower of Song Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey I ache in the places where I used to play And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on I'm just paying my rent every day Oh in the Tower of Song

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The Future
Give me back my broken night my mirrored room, my secret life it's lonely here, there's no one left to torture Give me absolute control over every living soul And lie beside me, baby, that's an order! Give me crack and anal sex Take the only tree that's left and stuff it up the hole in your culture Give me back the Berlin wall give me Stalin and St Paul I've seen the future, brother: it is murder. Things are going to slide, slide in all directions Won't be nothing Nothing you can measure anymore The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul When they said REPENT REPENT I wonder what they meant When they said REPENT REPENT I wonder what they meant When they said REPENT REPENT I wonder what they meant

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You don't know me from the wind you never will, you never did I'm the little jew who wrote the Bible I've seen the nations rise and fall I've heard their stories, heard them all but love's the only engine of survival Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It's over, it ain't going any further And now the wheels of heaven stop you feel the devil's riding crop Get ready for the future: it is murder There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code Your private life will suddenly explode There'll be phantoms There'll be fires on the road and the white man dancing You'll see a woman hanging upside down her features covered by her fallen gown and all the lousy little poets coming round tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson and the white man dancin' Give me back the Berlin wall Give me Stalin and St Paul Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima Destroy another fetus now We don't like children anyhow I've seen the future, baby: it is murder

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Waiting For The Miracle
(co-written by Sharon Robinson)

Baby, I've been waiting, I've been waiting night and day. I didn't see the time, I waited half my life away. There were lots of invitations and I know you sent me some, but I was waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come. I know you really loved me. but, you see, my hands were tied. I know it must have hurt you, it must have hurt your pride to have to stand beneath my window with your bugle and your drum, and me I'm up there waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come. Ah I don't believe you'd like it, You wouldn't like it here. There ain't no entertainment and the judgements are severe. The Maestro says it's Mozart but it sounds like bubble gum when you're waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come. Waiting for the miracle There's nothing left to do. I haven't been this happy since the end of World War II.

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Nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken. Nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb Nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting waiting for the miracle to come. I dreamed about you, baby. It was just the other night. Most of you was naked Ah but some of you was light. The sands of time were falling from your fingers and your thumb, and you were waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come Ah baby, let's get married, we've been alone too long. Let's be alone together. Let's see if we're that strong. Yeah let's do something crazy, something absolutely wrong while we're waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come. When you've fallen on the highway and you're lying in the rain, and they ask you how you're doing of course you'll say you can't complain -If you're squeezed for information, that's when you've got to play it dumb: You just say you're out there waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

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Be For Real
(by Frederick Knight)

Are you back in my life to stay Or is it just for today Oh that you're gonna need me? If it's a thrill you're looking for Honey, I'm flexible. Oh, yeah. Just be for real won't you, Baby Be for real oh, Baby You see I, I don't want to be hurt by love again So you see I'm not naive. I just would like to believe Ah what you tell me. So don't give me the world today And tomorrow take it away. Don't do that to me, darling. Just be for real won't you, Baby Be for real won't you, Baby Been hurt so many times You see I, I don't want to be hurt by love again. (I don't give a damn about the truth, Baby Except for the naked truth. Oh yeah) Just be for real won't you, Baby Be for real won't you, Baby No, no, no, no It's just that I, I don't want to be hurt by love again. Thanks for the song Mr. Knight.

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Closing Time
Ah we're drinking and we're dancing and the band is really happening and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high And my very sweet companion she's the Angel of Compassion she's rubbing half the world against her thigh And every drinker every dancer lifts a happy face to thank her the fiddler fiddles something so sublime all the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots and it's partner found, it's partner lost and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops: it's CLOSING TIME Yeah the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots and it's partner found, it's partner lost and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops: it's CLOSING TIME Ah we're lonely, we're romantic and the cider's laced with acid and the Holy Spirit's crying, "Where's the beef?" And the moon is swimming naked and the summer night is fragrant with a mighty expectation of relief So we struggle and we stagger down the snakes and up the ladder to the tower where the blessed hours chime and I swear it happened just like this: a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss the Gates of Love they budged an inch I can't say much has happened since but CLOSING TIME

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I swear it happened just like this: a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss the Gates of Love they budged an inch I can't say much has happened since CLOSING TIME I loved you for your beauty but that doesn't make a fool of me: you were in it for your beauty too and I loved you for your body there's a voice that sounds like God to me declaring, declaring, declaring that your body's really you And I loved you when our love was blessed and I love you now there's nothing left but sorrow and a sense of overtime and I missed you since the place got wrecked And I just don't care what happens next looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between, I guess it's CLOSING TIME Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked By the winds of change and the weeds of sex looks like freedom but it feels like death it's something in between, I guess it's CLOSING TIME Yeah we're drinking and we're dancing but there's nothing really happening and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night And my very close companion gets me fumbling gets me laughing she's a hundred but she's wearing something tight and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth except to say it isn't worth a dime And the whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights we're busted in the blinding lights, busted in the blinding lights of CLOSING TIME 128

The whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights we're busted in the blinding lights, busted in the blinding lights of CLOSING TIME Oh the women tear their blouses off and the men they dance on the polka-dots It's CLOSING TIME And it's partner found, it's partner lost and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops It's CLOSING TIME I swear it happened just like this: a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss It's CLOSING TIME The Gates of Love they budged an inch I can't say much has happened since But CLOSING TIME I loved you when our love was blessed I love you now there's nothing left But CLOSING TIME I miss you since the place got wrecked By the winds of change and the weeds of sex.

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Anthem
The birds they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be. Ah the wars they will be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again bought and sold and bought again the dove is never free. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. We asked for signs the signs were sent: the birth betrayed the marriage spent Yeah the widowhood of every government -signs for all to see. I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me.

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You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum You can strike up the march, there is no drum Every heart, every heart to love will come but like a refugee. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in.

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Democracy
It's coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square. It's coming from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming through a crack in the wall; on a visionary flood of alcohol; from the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount which I don't pretend to understand at all. It's coming from the silence on the dock of the bay, from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming from the sorrow in the street, the holy places where the races meet; from the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat. From the wells of disappointment where the women kneel to pray for the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

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Sail on, sail on O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on. It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst. It's here they got the range and the machinery for change and it's here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken and it's here the lonely say that the heart has got to open in a fundamental way: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming from the women and the men. O baby, we'll be making love again. We'll be going down so deep the river's going to weep, and the mountain's going to shout Amen! It's coming like the tidal flood beneath the lunar sway, imperial, mysterious, in amorous array: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean I love the country but I can't stand the scene. And I'm neither left or right I'm just staying home tonight, getting lost in that hopeless little screen. But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that Time cannot decay, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

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Light As The Breeze
She stands before you naked you can see it, you can taste it, and she comes to you light as the breeze. Now you can drink it or you can nurse it, it don't matter how you worship as long as you're down on your knees. So I knelt there at the delta, at the alpha and the omega, at the cradle of the river and the seas. And like a blessing come from heaven for something like a second I was healed and my heart was at ease. O baby I waited so long for your kiss for something to happen, oh something like this. And you're weak and you're harmless and you're sleeping in your harness and the wind going wild in the trees, and it ain't exactly prison but you'll never be forgiven for whatever you've done with the keys. It's dark now and it's snowing O my love I must be going, The river has started to freeze. And I'm sick of pretending I'm broken from bending I've lived too long on my knees.

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Then she dances so graceful and your heart's hard and hateful and she's naked but that's just a tease. And you turn in disgust from your hatred and from your love and comes to you light as the breeze. There's blood on every bracelet you can see it, you can taste it, and it's Please baby please baby please. And she says, Drink deeply, pilgrim but don't forget there's still a woman beneath this resplendent chemise. So I knelt there at the delta, at the alpha and the omega, I knelt there like one who believes. And the blessings come from heaven and for something like a second I'm cured and my heart is at ease

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Always
(by Irving Berlin)

(Oh friends, .. don't matter if you're a man or a woman. If you're in love with somebody, these are the words that you got to learn to say. Now listen carefully. Here it comes...) I'll be loving you always with a love that's true, always When the thing you've planned needs my helping hand, I will understand, always, always Days may not be fair, always Yeah but that's when I'll be there, always Not for just an hour, Not for just a day, Not for just a year, but always. I said that I'll be loving you, always with a love that's true, always. When the thing you've planned needs my helping hand, I will, I will understand, always, always (Oh that's pretty ... that's pretty too ... Oh darling) The days may not be fair, always Yeah but that's when I'll be there, always Not for just a second, or a minute, or an hour, Not for just a weekend and a shake down in the shower, Not for just the summer and the winter going sour, But always, always, always (Ok if you don't want to quit, let's try it one more time) I'll be loving you, always with a love that's true, always. When the thing you've planned needs my helping hand, I will understand, I will, I will understand, always, always

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The days may not be fair, always (Don't worry, baby) That's when I'll be there, always Not for just an hour, Not for just a day, Not for just a year, but always.

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In My Secret Life
I saw you this morning. You were moving so fast. Can’t seem to loosen my grip On the past. And I miss you so much. There’s no one in sight. And we’re still making love In My Secret Life. I smile when I’m angry. I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do To get by. But I know what is wrong, And I know what is right. And I’d die for the truth In My Secret Life. Hold on, hold on, my brother. My sister, hold on tight. I finally got my orders. I’ll be marching through the morning, Marching through the night, Moving cross the borders Of My Secret Life. Looked through the paper. Makes you want to cry. Nobody cares if the people Live or die. And the dealer wants you thinking That it’s either black or white. Thank G-d it’s not that simple In My Secret Life.

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I bite my lip. I buy what I’m told: From the latest hit, To the wisdom of old. But I’m always alone. And my heart is like ice. And it’s crowded and cold In My Secret Life.

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Thousand Kisses Deep
The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it’s done – Your little winning streak. And summoned now to deal With your invincible defeat, You live your life as if it’s real, A Thousand Kisses Deep. I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed, I’m back on Boogie Street. You lose your grip, and then you slip Into the Masterpiece. And maybe I had miles to drive, And promises to keep: You ditch it all to stay alive, A Thousand Kisses Deep. And sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go, A Thousand Kisses Deep. Confined to sex, we pressed against The limits of the sea: I saw there were no oceans left For scavengers like me. I made it to the forward deck. I blessed our remnant fleet – And then consented to be wrecked, A Thousand Kisses Deep.

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I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed, I’m back on Boogie Street. I guess they won’t exchange the gifts That you were meant to keep. And quiet is the thought of you, The file on you complete, Except what we forgot to do, A Thousand Kisses Deep. And sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go, A Thousand Kisses Deep. The odds are there to beat . . .

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That Dont Make It Junk
I fought against the bottle, But I had to do it drunk – Took my diamond to the pawnshop – But that don’t make it junk. I know that I’m forgiven, But I don’t know how I know I don’t trust my inner feelings – Inner feelings come and go. How come you called me here tonight? How come you bother With my heart at all? You raise me up in grace, Then you put me in a place, Where I must fall. Too late to fix another drink – The lights are going out – I’ll listen to the darkness sing – I know what that’s about. I tried to love you my way, But I couldn’t make it hold. So I closed the Book of Longing And I do what I am told. How come you called me here tonight? How come you bother with my heart at all? You raise me up in grace, Then you put me in a place, Where I must fall. I fought against the bottle, But I had to do it drunk – Took my diamond to the pawnshop – But that don’t make it junk.

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Here It Is
Here is your crown And your seal and rings; And here is your love For all things. Here is your cart, And your cardboard and piss; And here is your love For all of this. May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye. Here is your wine, And your drunken fall; And here is your love. Your love for it all. Here is your sickness. Your bed and your pan; And here is your love For the woman, the man. May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And, my love, Goodbye. And here is the night, The night has begun; And here is your death In the heart of your son.

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And here is the dawn, (Until death do us part); And here is your death, In your daughter’s heart. May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And, my love, Goodbye. And here you are hurried, And here you are gone; And here is the love, That it’s all built upon. Here is your cross, Your nails and your hill; And here is your love, That lists where it will May everyone live, And may everyone die. Hello, my love, And my love, Goodbye.

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Love Itself
The light came through the window, Straight from the sun above, And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of Love. In streams of light I clearly saw The dust you seldom see, Out of which the Nameless makes A Name for one like me. I’ll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door – Then Love Itself Love Itself was gone. All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance, And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance. I’ll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door – Then Love Itself Love Itself was gone. Then I came back from where I’d been. My room, it looked the same – But there was nothing left between The Nameless and the Name. All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance, And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance.

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I’ll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door – Then Love itself, Love Itself was gone. Love Itself was gone.

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By The Rivers Dark
By the rivers dark I wandered on. I lived my life in Babylon. And I did forget My holy song: And I had no strength In Babylon. By the rivers dark Where I could not see Who was waiting there Who was hunting me. And he cut my lip And he cut my heart. So I could not drink From the river dark. And he covered me, And I saw within, My lawless heart And my wedding ring, I did not know And I could not see Who was waiting there, Who was hunting me. By the rivers dark I panicked on. I belonged at last to Babylon. Then he struck my heart With a deadly force, And he said, ‘This heart: It is not yours.’

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And he gave the wind My wedding ring; And he circled us With everything. By the rivers dark, In a wounded dawn, I live my life In Babylon. Though I take my song From a withered limb, Both song and tree, They sing for him. Be the truth unsaid And the blessing gone, If I forget My Babylon. I did not know And I could not see Who was waiting there, Who was hunting me. By the rivers dark, Where it all goes on; By the rivers dark In Babylon.

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Alexandra Leaving
Suddenly the night has grown colder. The god of love preparing to depart. Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder, They slip between the sentries of the heart. Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure, They gain the light, they formlessly entwine; And radiant beyond your widest measure They fall among the voices and the wine. It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving, A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust – Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving. Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost. Even though she sleeps upon your satin; Even though she wakes you with a kiss. Do not say the moment was imagined; Do not stoop to strategies like this. As someone long prepared for this to happen, Go firmly to the window. Drink it in. Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing. Your firm commitments tangible again. And you who had the honor of her evening, And by the honor had your own restored – Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving; Alexandra leaving with her lord. Even though she sleeps upon your satin; Even though she wakes you with a kiss. Do not say the moment was imagined; Do not stoop to strategies like this. As someone long prepared for the occasion; In full command of every plan you wrecked – Do not choose a coward’s explanation that hides behind the cause and the effect.

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And you who were bewildered by a meaning; Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed – Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving. Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost. Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving. Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

150

You Have Loved Enough
I said I’d be your lover. You laughed at what I said. I lost my job forever. I was counted with the dead. I swept the marble chambers, But you sent me down below. You kept me from believing Until you let me know: That I am not the one who loves – It’s love that seizes me. When hatred with his package comes, You forbid delivery. And when the hunger for your touch Rises from the hunger, You whisper, "You have loved enough, Now let me be the Lover." I swept the marble chambers, But you sent me down below. You kept me from believing Until you let me know: That I am not the one who loves – It’s love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, You forbid delivery.

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Boogie Street
O Crown of Light, O Darkened One, I never thought we’d meet. You kiss my lips, and then it’s done: I’m back on Boogie Street. A sip of wine, a cigarette, And then it’s time to go. I tidied up the kitchenette; I tuned the old banjo. I’m wanted at the traffic-jam. They’re saving me a seat. I’m what I am, and what I am, Is back on Boogie Street. And O my love, I still recall The pleasures that we knew; The rivers and the waterfall, Wherein I bathed with you. Bewildered by your beauty there, I’d kneel to dry your feet. By such instructions you prepare A man for Boogie Street. So come, my friends, be not afraid. We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear. Tho’ all the maps of blood and flesh Are posted on the door, There’s no one who has told us yet What Boogie Street is for. O Crown of Light, O Darkened One, I never thought we’d meet. You kiss my lips, and then it’s done: I’m back on Boogie Street.

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The Land Of Plenty
Don’t really know who sent me To raise my voice and say: May the lights in The Land of Plenty Shine on the truth some day. I don’t know why I come here, Knowing as I do, What you really think of me, What I really think of you. For the millions in a prison, That wealth has set apart – For the Christ who has not risen, From the caverns of the heart – For the innermost decision, That we cannot but obey For what’s left of our religion, I lift my voice and pray: May the lights in The Land of Plenty Shine on the truth some day. I know I said I’d meet you, I’d meet you at the store, But I can’t buy it, baby. I can’t buy it anymore. And I don’t really know who sent me, To raise my voice and say: May the lights in The Land of Plenty Shine on the truth some day. I don’t know why I come here, knowing as I do, what you really think of me, what I really think of you.

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For the innermost decision That we cannot but obey For what’s left of our religion I lift my voice and pray: May the lights in The Land of Plenty Shine on the truth some day.

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(Words by Lord Byron, music by Leonard Cohen) [Dedicated to Irving Layton]

Go No More A-Roving

So we'll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul outwears the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.

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Because Of
Because of a few songs Wherein I spoke of their mystery, Women have been Exceptionally kind to my old age. They make a secret place In their busy lives And they take me there. They become naked In their different ways and they say, "Look at me, Leonard Look at me one last time." Then they bend over the bed And cover me up Like a baby that is shivering.

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The Letters
You never liked to get The letters that I sent. But now you've got the gist Of what my letters meant. You're reading them again, The ones you didn't burn. You press them to your lips, My pages of concern. I said there'd been a flood. I said there's nothing left. I hoped that you would come. I gave you my address. Your story was so long, The plot was so intense, It took you years to cross The lines of self-defense. The wounded forms appear: The loss, the full extent; And simple kindness here, The solitude of strength. You walk into my room. You stand there at my desk, Begin your letter to The one who's coming next.

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Undretow
I set out one night When the tide was low There were signs in the sky But I did not know I'd be caught in the grip Of the undertow Ditched on a beach Where the sea hates to go With a child in my arms And a chill in my soul And my heart the shape Of a begging bowl

158

Morning Glory
No words this time? No words. No, there are times when nothing can be done. Not this time. Is it censorship? Is it censorship? No, it's evaporation. No, it's evaporation. Is this leading somewhere? Yes. We're going down the lane. Is this going somewhere? Into the garden. Into the backyard. We're walking down the driveway. Are we moving towards.... We're in the backyard. ...some transcendental moment? It's almost light. That's right. That's it. Are we moving towards some transcendental moment? That's right. That's it. Do you think you'll be able to pull it off? Yes. Do you think you can pull it off? Yes, it might happen. I'm all ears. I'm all ears. Oh the morning glory!

159

On That Day
Some people say It's what we deserve For sins against g-d For crimes in the world I wouldn't know I'm just holding the fort Since that day They wounded New York Some people say They hate us of old Our women unveiled Our slaves and our gold I wouldn't know I'm just holding the fort But answer me this I won't take you to court Did you go crazy Or did you report On that day On that day They wounded New York

160

Villanelle For Our Time
From bitter searching of the heart, Quickened with passion and with pain We rise to play a greater part. This is the faith from which we start: Men shall know commonwealth again From bitter searching of the heart. We loved the easy and the smart, But now, with keener hand and brain, We rise to play a greater part. The lesser loyalties depart, And neither race nor creed remain From bitter searching of the heart. Not steering by the venal chart That tricked the mass for private gain, We rise to play a greater part. Reshaping narrow law and art Whose symbols are the millions slain, From bitter searching of the heart We rise to play a greater part.

161

There For You
When it all went down And the pain came through I get it now I was there for you Don't ask me how I know it's true I get it now I was there for you I make my plans Like I always do But when I look back I was there for you I walk the streets Like I used to do And I freeze with fear But I'm there for you I see my life In full review It was never me It was always you You sent me here You sent me there Breaking things I can't repair Making objects Out of thoughts Making more By thinking not Eating food And drinking wine A body that I thought was mine Dressed as Arab Dressed as Jew O mask of iron I was there for you Moods of glory Moods so foul The world comes through

162

A bloody towel And death is old But it's always new I freeze with fear And I'm there for you I see it clear I always knew It was never me I was there for you I was there for you My darling one And by your law It all was done

163

Dear Heather
Dear Heather Please walk by me again With a drink in your hand And your legs all white From the winter

164

Nightingale
Dedicated to Carl Anderson (1945-2004)

I built my house beside the wood So I could hear you singing And it was sweet and it was good And love was all beginning Fare thee well my nightingale 'Twas long ago I found you Now all your songs of beauty fail The forest closes 'round you The sun goes down behind a veil 'Tis now that you would call me So rest in peace my nightingale Beneath your branch of holly Fare thee well my nightingale I lived but to be near you Tho' you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you

165

To A Teacher
Dedicated to A. M. Klein (1909-1972)

Hurt once and for all into silence. A long pain ending without a song to prove it. Who could stand beside you so close to Eden, When you glinted in every eye the held-high razor, shivering every ram and son? And now the silent loony bin, where The shadows live in the rafters like Day-weary bats, Until the turning mind, a radar signal, lures them to exaggerate Mountain-size on the white stone wall Your tiny limp. How can I leave you in such a house? Are there no more saints and wizards to praise their ways with pupils, No more evil to stun with the slap of a wet red tongue? Did you confuse the Messiah in a mirror and rest because he had finally come? Let me cry Help beside you, Teacher. I have entered under this dark roof As fearlessly as an honoured son Enters his father's house.

166

The Faith
[Based on a Quebec folk song]

The sea so deep and blind The sun, the wild regret The club, the wheel, the mind, O love, aren't you tired yet? The club, the wheel, the mind O love, aren't you tired yet? The blood, the soil, the faith These words you can't forget Your vow, your holy place O love, aren't you tired yet? The blood, the soil, the faith O love, aren't you tired yet? A cross on every hill A star, a minaret So many graves to fill O love, aren't you tired yet? So many graves to fill O love, aren't you tired yet? The sea so deep and blind Where still the sun must set And time itself unwind O love, aren't you tired yet? And time itself unwind O love, aren't you tired yet?

167

Tennessee Waltz
(Redd Stewart and Pee Wee King, additional verse: Leonard Cohen)

I was dancing with my darlin' to the Tennessee Waltz When an old friend I happened to see Introduced him to my loved one and while they were waltzing My friend stole my sweetheart from me. I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz Now I know just how much I have lost Yes I lost my little darlin' The night they were playing The beautiful Tennessee Waltz. She comes dancing through the darkness To the Tennessee Waltz And I feel like I'm falling apart And it's stronger than drink And it's deeper than sorrow This darkness she's left in my heart.

168

Priests
And who will write love songs for you When I am lord at last And your body is some little highway shrine That all my priests have passed That all my priests have passed? My priests they will put flowers there They will stand before the glass But they'll wear away your little window, love They will trample on the grass They will trample on the grass. And who will aim the arrow That men will follow through your grace When I am lord of memory And all your armour has turned to lace And all your armour has turned to lace? The simple life of heroes And the twisted life of saints They just confuse the sunny calendar With their red and golden paints With their red and golden paints. And all of you have seen the dance That God has kept from me But he has seen me watching you When all your minds were free When all your minds were free.

169

God is Alive, Magic is Afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot God is alive, magic is afoot God is alive, magic is afoot God is afoot, magic is alive Alive is afoot, magic never died God never sickened Many poor men lied Many sick men lied Magic never weakened Magic never hid Magic always ruled God is afoot, God never died God was ruler Though his funeral lengthened Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled Though his shrouds were hoisted The naked God did live Though his words were twisted The naked magic thrived Though his death was published Round and round the world The heart did not believe Many hurt men wondered Many struck men bled Magic never faltered Magic always lead Many stones were rolled But God would not lie down Many wild men lied Many fat men listened Though they offered stones Magic still was fed Though they locked their coffers God was always served Magic is afoot, God is alive Alive is afoot Alive is in command Many weak men hungered

170

Many strong men thrived Though they boast of solitude God was at their side Nor the dreamer in his cell Nor the captain on the hill Magic is alive Though his death was pardoned Round and round the world The heart would not believe Though laws were carved in marble They could not shelter men Though altars built in parliaments They could not order men Police arrested magic and magic went with them Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry But magic would not tarry It moves from arm to arm It would not stay with them Magic is afoot It cannot come to harm It rests in an empty palm It spawns in an empty mind But magic is no instrument Magic is the end Many men drove magic But magic stayed behind Many strong men lied They only passed through magic And out the other side Many weak men lied They came to God in secret And though they left Him nourished They would not tell who healed Though mountains danced before them They said that God was dead Though his shrouds were hoisted The naked God did live This I mean to whisper to my mind This I mean to laugh within my mind This I mean my mind to serve Til' service is but magic Moving through the world And mind itself is magic 171

Coursing through the flesh And flesh itself is magic Dancing on a clock And time itself The magic length of God God is alive, magic is afoot . . .

172

Everybody's Child
Yes I remember the promise That you made in the bar When the kittens was born And you could not keep warm You moved away to a mountain The sun rose behind You said yourself a prayer That you laid down on the blind You lost them in your freedom, You need 'em now you're wild Blessed is the memory Of everybody's child. And the vow of compassion That ya swore through your teeth When the war began to end And the little brown photographs weep Nobody beleive it only But as the train pulls away With its cargo of folly Sold as German paperweights Costing you your freedom, Even now you're wild Blessed is the memory Of everybody's child Well it's four in the morning And there's no one at home Except for your wife And your little baby on the phone Ah, somebody's gotta listen To a promise or two This room is far too small For a pilgrim like you

173

They're offering you your freedom, Yeah you need 'em now - you're wild Blessed is the memory Of everybody's child. Ah, but now that you've decided To follow the sun, Like a shadow of waiting there Or a king on the run Your chains are too tight For these seas you must swim. You're smiling at the seaweed, But your smile is much too grim. Costing you your freedom, yeah, Even now you're wild, But blessed is the memory Of eveybody's child

174

Store Room
Ça c'est une nouvelle chanson, c'est Store Room, Store Room... Dépôt? Quelque chose comme ça. The place where everything comes from, One, ...Storeroom.... One, Two, Three, Four ... I love you Without really caring Whom you love: Yeah my hands below the belt; Or my hands above; In the arms of other men; Or in my bed again. Just a man Taking What he needs From the storeroom. Oh, I love to see you sitting there upon your golden throne. Your little preachers All around you Being born. And your prophet, straight and tall, To undermine it all. Just a man Taking What he needs From your storeroom, Storeroom! Yeah ol' Shakespeare - he said it all, And he said no more.

175

And he left me Feeling just like A two bit whore. Well the silence It broke my heart; 'Till I Spread my legs apart. Just a man Taking What he needs From the storeroom, Storeroom! Oh, my love, let us continue what has been begun Praying for: The mother and the father, The daughter and the son. But should one refuse to come, no, {'count notes'??} It does not subtract the sum. Just a man Taking What he needs From the storeroom, Storeroom, StoreRoom, STOREROOM! It's not a wind That keeps you up, It's not the snow, It's not the moon Coming like a headlight Through your window; It's not the thumbnail on the screen That scrapes away your dream; It's just a man Taking What he needs From the storeroom, storeroom, Storeroom!

176

And the news of all these burning towns - you don't Really mind Just a spool that you turn, And you turn And he won't unwind. You know these wars - that you did not start They do not tear your sleep apart Just a man Taking What he needs From the storeroom, Storeroom, STOREROOM! I loved you, without really caring Who it is you love: My hands below the belt; Or my hands above; In the arms of other men; Or in my bed again. He's just a man Taking What he needs From the storeroom, Storeroom. ahh....

177

Do I Have To Dance All Night?
I'm forty-one. The moon is full. You make love very well. You touch me like I touch myself. I like you, mademoiselle. You're so fresh and you're so new. I do enjoy you, miss. There's nothing I would rather do Than move around just like this. But do I have to dance all night? Do I have to dance all night? Oh tell me - bird of paradise, Do I have to dance all night? You never have to tell me what It is you really think of me, alright. Let's say I'm doing fine, But do I have to dance all the night? But do I have to dance all night? But do I have to dance all night? Ooh tell me Bird of Paradise, Do I have to dance all night? I learned this step awhile ago. I had to practice it while everybody slept. I waited half my life for you, you know. I didn't even think that you'd accept. And here you are before me in the flesh, saying "yes, Yes, - YES!" But do I have to dance all night? Do I have to dance all night? Come on, tell me, - Bird of Paradise, Do I have to dance all night?

178

I learned this step awhile ago. I had to practice it while everybody slept. I waited half my life for you, you to know, I never really thought that you'd accept. And here you are before me in the flesh, saying "yes, Yes, -- YEAH..!" - Come on now... But do I have to dance all night? Do I have to dance all night? Oh tell me Bird of Paradise, Do I have to dance all night?

179

Misty Blue
Oh but it's been such a long, long time. Thought I'd got you off my mind. Looks like I can't, just the thought of you turns my whole world a misty blue. Just the mention of your name fans the flicker to a flame. I can't forget the things we used to do. My whole world turns misty blue. You know I should forget you I really should, and heaven knows that I tried. But when I told you, when I said that we were through deep in my heart I lied Baby, oh what a long, long time. Thought I'd get you off my mind. Oh but I can't, just the thought of you turns my world misty blue And the very mention of your name fans the flicker to a flame. I think of things we used to do, my whole world turns misty blue.

180

as sung in 1979 in Brighton

Blues By The Jews (Billy Sunday)

My name is Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God. They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God And God is always angry Just in case you think He's not He's angry at your body For reasons that are His He doesn't like your body According to reasons that are only His I'd like you to know He's very very angry But that's just the way He is He's angry at the spirit That is turned away from Him He's angry at the spirit That's turned away from Him If He ever gets His Hands on it He's gonna tear it limb from limb They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God And God is always angry Just in case you think He's not He's angry at the universe He drives him up the wall I could say for a fact He's not pleased with this universe He drives him up the wall He's sorry that He ever thought of you and me at all

181

He's angry when you're dying And He's angry when you're dead And you're always one or the other He's angry when you1re dying And He's angry when you1re dead And He's furious at me For everything I've ever said If you feel His anger some night Let's say in a Motel room at three a.m. If you feel His awesome anger In your Hotel room let's say at three a.m. It turns out that He's still very angry That you took so long to be afraid of Him They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God I came here to tell you that God is always angry Just in case you think He's not If you fall asleep some night Which everybody does If you have the nerve to go to sleep one tired night Which most everybody does And you happen to have some silly dream To Him it's very serious. And if some lonely night you ask yourself Where all the pretty girls are gone ? Some night you're gonna ask yourself where where Where are those pretty girls gone Then He blows away the little scraps of paper That they write their names and numbers on Then you find that you get down on your knees And you want to renounce for all time a woman's sweet caress You have some vocation that makes you kneel down And renounce for eternity a woman's sweet caress Then He causes you do touch yourself As soon as you undress

182

They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God They call me Billy Sunday I speak in the name of God And God is always angry Just in case you think He's not

183

Thirsty For The Kiss early Heart With No Companion performed in London, 1979, and Melbourne, 1980

Oh my love, you are the shadow. I go stumbling through tonight. And our love, just smoke and ashes Of a flame that once burned bright. Do not go! I cannot follow! I'm so thirsty for the kiss. Ah that does not end in sorrow And a thirstiness like this. Now I sing this for the captain Who's ship was never built For the mother in confusion Who's wound cannot be fixed. For the heart with no companion, For the soul without a key. For the prima ballerina, Who cannot dance to anything. For the heart with no companion, For the soul without a key. For the prima ballerina Who cannot dance to anything. La da dada dada dadada Da dadada dada dadada La da dada dada dadada Da dadada dada dadada Oh do not go! I cannot follow! I'm so thirsty for the kiss. Don't either does not end in sorrow, And a thirsting for your kiss.

184

Song of Bernadette
Written by Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes

There was a child named Bernadette I heard the story long ago She saw the Queen of Heaven once And kept the vision in her soul No one believed what she had seen No one believed what she heard That there were sorrows to be healed And mercy, mercy in this world So many hearts I find Broke like yours and mine Torn by what we've done and can't undo I just want to hold you Won't you let me hold you Like Bernadette would do We've been around, we fall, we fly We mostly fall, we mostly run And every now and then we try To mend the damage that we've done Tonight, tonight I cannot rest I've got this joy inside my breast To think that I did not forget That child, that song of Bernadette So many hearts I find ...

185

Wither Thou Goest
Wither Thou goest - I will go. Wither Thou lodgest - I will lodge. Thy people shall be - My people - own. Wither Thou goest - I will go. Wither Thou goest - I will go. Wither Thou lodgest - I will lodge. Thy people shall be - My people - own. Wither Thou goest - I will go.

186

The Broken Lip
Improvisation during the Frankfurt concert of April 6th, 1972 when someone from the audience requested a non-existened song

I never had a broken lip myself But I'm willing to try it out So why don't you come right up here And punch me in the mouth I ain't got no broken lip, babe And you can see my mouth is perfectly whole There isn't even a trace of a cold sore Let alone a broken lip Come to think of it, I did have a broken lip But that was a long time ago When I was a lot younger and a lot thinner And a lot more ambitious And a lot more reverent A lot more reverent A whole lot more reverent I think it was my sister Who really had the broken lip I remember her lip, not only was it broken You could say it was entirely mutilated She had a handicap Oh little sister, you got no mouth at all Oh little sister, you got no mouth at all Do you find it hard to drink water? Do you find it hard to drink wine? You know I get down on my knees and I pray for you Little lipless sister of mine. Oh it wasn't my sister No I think it was my best friend That's why I liked him He was very little competition In those adolescent kissing games

187

Dont Know Why Im Scared Tonight
Improvisation during the Frankfurt concert of April 6th, 1972

Don't know why I'm scared tonight, but baby, I am I don't know if it's just the crowd out there I don't know if it's the slaughtered lamb But I'm singing chains of gold for you You know I've become a prisoner of song With lawyers and contracts and royalties And very little else in my hand.

188

Im Trying To Break Free
Improvisation during the Frankfurt concert of April 6th, 1972 I'm trying to break free myself you know Trying to lose my old songs Trying to start a new life before it's too late Trying to get along.

189

Never Any Good
I was never any good at loving you I was never any good at coming Through for you Youre going to feel much better When you cut me loose forever I was never any good Never any good I was never any good at loving you I was dying when we met I bet my life on you But you called me and I folded Like you knew Id do You called my ace, my king, my bluff Okay, you win, enoughs enough I was never any good Never any good I was never any good at loving you I was pretty good at taking out The garbage Pretty good at holding up the wall Dealing with the fire and the earthquake But that dont count That dont count That dont count for nothing much at all I was never any good at loving you I was just a tourist in your bed looking At the view But I cant forget where my lips Have been Those holy hills, that deep ravine I was never any good Never any good I was never any good at loving you

190

I was pretty good at taking out the garbage Pretty good at holding up the wall Im sorry for my crimes against The moonlight I didnt think I didnt think I didnt think the moon would mind at all I was never any good at loving you At doing what a woman really wants A man to do Youre going to feel much better When you cut me loose forever I was never any good Never any good I was never any good at loving you

191

Theres No Reason Why You Should
Now I'm going to give you a second chance. This is the formula in which you can articulate the very worse kind of anxieties, fears, short circuits between all possible relationships, and by singing it with me you'll resolve all those things and everything will be straight. You'll be straighter than you've ever been. You can really look at the person next to you and things will be so good, really No it wasn't any good There's no reason that you should Remember me No it wasn't any good There's no reason why you should Remember me There's no reason why you should Remember me There's no reason why you should Remember me There's no reason why you should Remember me

192

The Great Event
It's going to happen very soon. The great event which will end the horror. Which will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun goes down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will reverse the effects of the world's mad plunge into suffering, for the last 200 million years. What a lovely night that would be. What a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and the retired nightingales, pick up their dusty tails, and assert the majesty of creation!

193

Way Down Deep way down, way way down way way down deep you're got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You're got me way down, way down deep I wander with you in my sleep I'm way down, Way way down, way way down deep It came to me this morning I was walking down the street was like my soul could taste you and God You tasted sweet finally I can breathe again finally I can speak I've got you in the glory place I've got you way down deep I've got you way down, way way down, way way down deep You're got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You're got me way down, way down deep I wander with you in my sleep I'm way down, way way down, way way down deep It's a funny feeling but I cannot say I mind I know that I'm dealing with a love that's far from blind I see every single angle I look before I leap how else can I put it when you're got me way down deep

194

You've got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You've got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You've got me way down, way down deep I wander with you in my sleep I'm way down, way way down way way down deep don't matter what we gave away was nothing we could keep don't matter what we didn't say you know that talk is cheap forgive me if I hate you you're a liar and a thief but I've got you in the glory place I got you way Down deep you've got me way down, way way down ... You've got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You've got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You've got me way down, way down deep I wander with you in my sleep I'm way down, way way down way way down deep don't matter if the road is long don't matter if it's steep don't matter if the moon goes out and darkness is Complete don't matter if we lose our way I know we're gonna meet I've got you in the glory place I've got you Way down deep

195

You've got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You've got me way down, way way down, way way down deep You've got me way down, way down deep I wander with you in my sleep I'm way down, way way down way way down deep way down, way way down, way way down deep way down, way way down, way way down deep.

196

197

The Party Was Over Then Too
When I was about fifteen I followed a beautiful girl into the Communist Party of Canada. There were secret meetings and you got yelled at if you were a minute late. We studied the McCarran Act passed by the stooges in Washington, and the Padlock Law passed by their lackeys in Quebec, and they said nasty shit about my family and how we got our money. They wanted to overthrow the country that I loved (and served, as a Sea Scout). And even the good people who wanted to change things, they hated them too and called them social fascists. They had plans for criminals like my uncles and aunties and they even had plans for my poor little mother who had slipped out of Lithuania with two frozen apples and a bandanna full of monopoly money. They never let me get near the girl and the girl never let me get near the girl. She became more and more beautiful until she married a lawyer and became a social fascist herself and very likely a criminal too. But I admired the Communists for their pig-headed devotion to something absolutely wrong.

198

It was years before I found something comparable for myself: I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots who considered themselves the Marines of the spiritual world. It's just a matter of time: we'll be landing this raft on the Other Shore, we'll be taking that beach on the Other Shore.

199

Love Itself
The light came through the window now straight from the sun above, and so inside my little room there plunged the rays of Love. In streams of light I clearly saw the dust you seldom see, the dust the Nameless makes to speak a Name for one like me. And all mixed up with sunlight now the flecks did float and dance and I was tumbled up with them in formless circumstance. I'll try to say a little more: this Love went on and on until it reached an open door Then Love itself was gone. The self-same moment words were seen from every window frame, but there was nothing left between the Nameless and the Name.

200

Not A Jew
Anyone who says I'm not a Jew is not a Jew I'm very sorry but this is final

so says: Eliezar, son of Nissan, priest of Israel; a.k.a Nightingale of the Sinai, Yom Kippur 1973; a.k.a Jikan the Unconvincing, zen monk; a.k.a Leonard Cohen, Certified Food Worker, San Bernadino County, CA; a.k.a The Founder, Order of the Unified Heart; a.k.a The Best Dressed Man in Montreal (local newspaper)

201

Seisen Is Dancing
Seisen has a long body. Her shaved head threatens the skylight and her feet go down into the vegetable cellar. When she dances for us at one of our infrequent celebrations, the dining hall with it's cargo of weightless monks and nuns, bounces around her hips like a hula-hoop. The venerable old pine trees crack out of sentry duty and get involved, as do the San Gabriel mountains and the flat cities of Claremont, Upland and the Inland Empire. And ocean speaks to ocean saying, What the hell, let's go with it, rouse ourselves. The Milky Way undoes its spokes and cleaves to Seisen's haunches, as do the worlds beyond, and worlds unborn, not to mention darkest holes of brooding anti-matter, and random flying mental objects like this poem, fucking up the atmosphere. It's all going round her hips, and what her hips enclose; it's all lit up by her face, her ownerless expression. And then there's this aching fool over here, no, over here who thinks that Seisen's still a woman, who's trying to find a place to stand where Seisen isn't Dancing.

202

To A Young Nun
This undemanding love that our staggered births have purchased for us -You in your generation, I in mine. I am not the one you are looking for. You are not the one I've stopped looking for. How sweetly time disposes of us as we go arm in arm over the Bridge of Details: Your turn to chop. My turn to cook. Your turn to die for love. My turn to resurrect.

203

You Are Right,Sahara
You are right, Sahara. There are no mists, or veils, or distances. But the mist is surrounded by a mist; and the veil is hidden behind a veil; and the distance continually draws away from the distance. That is why there are no mists, or veils, or distances. That is why it is called The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. It is here that The Traveler becomes The Wanderer, and The Wanderer becomes The One Who Is Lost, and The One Who Is Lost becomes The Seeker, and The Seeker becomes The Passionate Lover, and The Passionate Lover becomes The Beggar, and The Beggar becomes The Wretch, and The Wretch becomes The One Who Must Be Sacrificed, and The One Who Must Be Sacrificed becomes The Resurrected One and The Resurrected One becomes The One Who has Transcended The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Then for a thousand years, or the rest of the afternoon, such a One spins in the Blazing Fire of Changes, embodying all the transformations, one after the other, and then beginning again, and then ending again, 86,000 times a second. Then such a one, if he is a man, is ready to love the woman Sahara; and such a one, if she is a woman, is ready to love the man who can put into song The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Is it you who are waiting, Sahara, or is it I?

204

Sorrows Of The Eldrely
The old are kind but the young are hot. Love may be blind but Desire is not.

205

The Goal
I can´t leave my house or answer the phone. I´m going down again but feeling no pain. And that´s the great change and mercy to boot --the enemy´s dead and I don´t have to shoot. But as for the fall: it was writ long ago and I can´t stop it now --I´m rain and I´m snow. And I settle at last on the ground of my soul in shapes of the past and shapes that unfold. I sit in my chair and I look at the street -the enemy´s gone and his absence is sweet! I move with the leaves I shine with the chrome I´m almost alive I´m almost at home. But please do not follow I´ve nothing to teach: except that the goal falls short of the reach.

206

Book Of Longing (Dear Reader)
I can´t make the hills The system is shot I´m living on pills for which I thank G-d There´s sun in the leaves and birds in the tree. Nobody believes it´s written by Thee. I used to be song I used to be cock but time is long gone past my laughingstock I bid you good-bye There´s nothing to add I´ve tried and I try to stop going mad I followed the course from chaos to art My dick was the horse my life was the cart I´m back at my desk (the end of the line) a bee in my breast a snake in my spine The silverware shines that my mother left to me when she died fulfilled and bereft

207

My leash is too long I think that I´m free I´d leap at the young but I´m sixty-three I know what I want It took many lives I´m cured by the cunt I´m killed by the eyes The sorrows are real as froth on the wave as shit on the beach the city´s disgrace Who cares what I say I´m not who I was I´m paid what I pay I´m always in love The summer won´t come ´till I go to bed The birds will return when the dog is dead You can´t say it right when you touch yourself But truth´s not advice It is total health The crap on my back the piss in my face but happy at last in the Holy Place You can´t go too deep if you want to swim where the mermaids weep out of love for Him

208

I`m nothing but lust I´m nothing but pain I did these mistrust but Never Again I say what I want for I am the Child of G-d coming home and His Wife gone wild I don´t need a thing I use what I have a moth-eaten wing a worm cut in half With these I invoke The Name to draw nigh I´m clamped in a stock to hold my head high My animal howls My angel´s upset And deep in my bowels the shit of regret You can´t stop a man from loving too much I´m still licking stamps from trying it once My pen is too wet My ink is too black The Winner won´t get his foot on the track But the one like me with light in her eye is utterly free to crawl or to fly

209

And she´ll know the path I carved through the pain my will cut in half and Freedom between I´ll meet her one day when the time is right for me to display my flare in the night for the space in space to cough up the Word that seals our Embrace unharmed and unheard And Mercy at last for one doubled up and tied to the mast with the flags of love And thank´s be to you for helping me out when Youth had no clue what´s it all about Your kindness is kind your trueness is true I pray that you´ll find your Beloved, too as I have found mine where I´d never look: in the threaded spine of my Longing Book.

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Roshi At 89
Roshi's very tired he's lying on his bed He's been living with the living and dying with the dead But now he wants another drink (will wonders never cease?) He's making war on war and he's making war on peace He's sitting in the throne-room on his great Original Face and he's making war on Nothing that has something in its place His stomach's very happy the prunes are working well There's no one going to Heaven and there's no one left in Hell

211

Better better than darkness is fake darkness which swindles you into necking with your neighbor´s daughter better than banks are false banks where you put all your rough money into legal tender better than coffee is blue coffee which you drink in your last bath or sometimes waiting for your shoes to be dismantled better than poetry is my poetry which refers to everything that is beautiful and dignified, but is neither of these itself better than wild is secretly wild as when I am in my car in the darkness of a parking space with a new friend

212

better than art is repulsive art which is shunned by Hashem and in the ensuing hullaballoo I slip into broadway theaters and sit undetected in the Hadassah section better than greatness is silly greatness which stands me on the shoulders of my garage the better to drop all the eggs into one basket better than memory is tricky memory which is the juice of patriotism and national interest and the fall of husbands and all the Sad Show better than darkness is darkless which is inkier, vaster more profound and eerily refrigerated filled with caves and blinding tunnels in which appear beckoning dead relatives and other religious paraphernalia

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better than love is rove which is the Japanese more refined smoother strangely erotictiny serene people with huge genitalia but lighter than thought comfortably installed on an eyelash of mist and living grimly ever after cooking, gardening and raising kids better than my mother is your mother who is still alive while mine is dead as a doornail better than me are you kinder than me are you sweeter smarter faster you you you prettier than me stronger than me lonelier than me I want to get to know you better and better

214

The Drunkard Becomes Gender-Free
This morning I woke up again I thank my Lord for that The world is such a pigpen That I have to wear a hat I love the Lord I praise the Lord I do the Lord forgive I hope I won't be sorry For allowing Him to live I know you like to get me drunk And laugh at what I say I'm very happy that you do I'm lonely every day I'm angry at the angel Who pinched me on the thigh And made me fall in love With every woman passing by I know they are your sisters And your daughters and your wives But even tho' they live at home They all lead double lives It's fun to run to heaven When you're off the beaten track But God is such a monkey When you've got Him on your back God is such a monkey And He's such a woman too SHe's such a place of nothing SHe's such a face of you May SHe crash into your temple And look out thru' your eyes And make you fall in love With everybody you despise

215

S.O.S.
Take a long time with your anger, sleepy head. Don't waste it in riots. Don't tangle it with ideas. The Devil won't let me speak, will only let me hint that you are a slave, your misery a deliberate policy of those in whose thrall you suffer, and who are sustained by your misfortune. The atrocities over there, the interior paralysis over here-Pleased with the better deal? You are clamped down. You are being bred for pain. The Devil ties my tongue. I'm speaking to you, 'friend of my scribbled life'. You have been conquered by those who know how to conquer invisibly. The curtains move so beautifully, lace curtains of some sweet old intrigue: the Devil tempting me to turn away from alarming you. So I must say it quickly. Whoever is in your life, those who harm you, those who help you; those whom you know and those whom you do not know -let them off the hook, help them off the hook. Recognize the hook. You are listening to Radio Resistance.

216

Religious Statues
After a while I started playing with dolls I loved their peaceful expressions They all had their places in a corner of Room 315 I would say to myself: It doesn´t matter that you can´t breathe that you are hopelessly involved in the panic of the situation It is the will of God I´d light a cigarette and a stick of Nag Champa Both would burn too fast in the draft of the ceiling fan Then I might say something like: Thank You for the terms of my life which make it so painfully clear that I am powerless to control You and I´d watch CNN the rest of the night from a completely different point of view

217

The Best
India has the best Ice Cream America has the best Chocolate England has the best Phlegm Spain has the best Worms Italy has the best Mist Israel has the best Self-Mockery Canada has the best Light Mexico has the best Eagles Portugal has the best Circles Egypt has the best Paper Morocco has the best Jews Japan has the best Creases I've been to too many countries I died when I left Montreal I met women I didn't understand I pretended to get interested in food But it was all The Fear of Snow It was all the Will of God It was all The Heart swallowing The Other Organs It was Five Days of Summer and Two Days of Spring Mostly it was the Death of my Dog Sorrow is the time to begin Longing is the place to rejoice But I did not begin Longing is the place to rejoice But I did not begin and I did not rejoice I was lazy in God Books lie open all around me Despite my efforts they keep coming into my room And there is a slab of old stone with cuneiform inscriptions When I lived in Montreal I knew what to wear I had old clothes and old friends and my dog had been dead for only ten or fifteen years

218

Fortunately there is no space for regret in the Poverty of these Reflections

219

Not So Friendly
Not so friendly today, are you, darling? I, too, find myself in a distant mood. Maybe it's time to take the long way home, the back streets where we will be assaulted by thugs because we are rich, and spit on by old women who don't like your bare arms. Then how about caramel custard In that place they know us? Yes, I'm feeling better about you, already. I'm looking forward to our white hotel room where the two puppets can be naked at last, and in each other's arms, surrender to the strings.

220

You Have Loved Enough
I came to You with sorrow – You said,"Come to me with bread”. I could not make a living – You employed me with the dead. I chose the marble chambers – But You sent me down below. You kept me from believing Until You let me know: That I am not the one who loves – It's Love that seizes me! When hatred with his package comes, You forbid delivery. And when the hunger for Your touch rises from the hunger, You whisper, "Child ,you've loved enough, now let Me be the Lover".

221

Alexandra Leaving
(based on The God Abandons Anthony,a poem by Constantine P. Cavafy)

Suddenly the night has grown colder. Some deity preparing to depart. Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder, they slip between the sentries of your heart. Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure, they gain the light, they formlessly entwine; and radiant beyond your widest measure they fall among the voices and the wine. lt's not a trick, your senses all deceiving, a fitful dream the morning will exhaust--Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving, Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost. Even though she sleeps upon your satin. Even though she wakes you with a kiss. Do not say the moment was imagined, Do not stoop to strategies like this. As someone long prepared for this to happen, Go firmly to the window. Drink it in. Exquisite music, Alexandra laughing. Your first commitments tangible again. You who had the honor of her evening, And by that honor had your own restored--Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving. Alexandra leaving with her lord. As someone long prepared for the occasion; In full command of every plan you wrecked--Do not choose a coward's explanation that hides behind the cause and the effect,

222

You who were bewildered by a meaning, whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed--Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving. Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

223

Because Of A Few Songs
Because of a few songs wherein I spoke of their mystery, women have been exceptionally kind to my old age. They make a secret place in their busy lives and they take me there. They become naked in their different ways and they say, "Look at me, Leonard look at me one last time." Then they bend over the bed and cover me up like a baby that is shivering.

224

Promise
I will never return the Holy Grail to its "rightful owners."

225

The Correct Attitude
Except for a couple of hours in the morning which I passed in the company of a sage I stayed in bed without food only a few mouthfuls of water “you are a fine looking old man” I said to myself in the mirror “and what is more you have the correct attitude You don’t care if it ends or if it goes on And as for the women and the music there will be plenty of that in Paradise” Then I went to the Mosque of Memory to express my gratitude

226

Mercy Returns To Me
A woman I want An honour I covet A place where I want my mind to dwell Then Mercy returns me To the fretboard And the problems of the song.

227

Good Advice For Someone Like Me behind the pain someone is rejoicing behind the torture there is love who's going to buy this bullshit if you don't become the ocean you'll be seasick every day

228

Thousands
Out of the thousands who are known, or who want to be known as poets, maybe one or two are genuine and the rest are fakes, hanging around the sacred precincts trying to look like the real thing. Needless to say I am one of the fakes, and this is my story

229

A Life Of Errands
If You Are Lucky You Will Grow Old And Live A Life Of Errands. You Will Discern What People Need And Provide It Before They Ask. You Will Drive Your Car Here And There Delivering And Fetching And Neither The Traffic Nor The Weather Will Bother You In The Least. You Will Whip Down The 405 To San Diego To Pick Up An Acorn For Someone's Proverb And So On And So Forth. In Spite Of The Ache In Your Heart About The Girl You Never Found And The Fact That After Years Of Spiritual Rigor You Did Not Manage To Enlighten Yourself A Certain Cheerfulness Will Begin To Arise Out Of Your Crushed Hopes And Intentions. How Thirstily You Embrace Your Next Commission: To Sift Through The Sunglasses At A Lost And Found In Las Vegas Just A Few Hours Across The Desert.

230

Your Hair Is White You Have Breasts And A Gut Over Your Belt You Are No Longer A Boy, Or Even A Man But A Sense Of Gratitude Enlivens Every Move You Make. Yes, Sir, These Are The Very Gold-Rimmed Pair She Left In The Plastic Tray Beside The Dollar Slot Machines. No, Sir, I Am Not Lying.

231

Hospitality drinking cognac with the old man – ......his exquisite hospitality in the shack by the river – that is, no hospitality just emptying the bottle into my glass and filling my plate and falling asleep when it was time to go

232

The Flood
The flood it is gathering Soon it will move Across every shoreline Against every roof The body will drown And the soul will shake loose I write all this down But I don’t have the proof

233

Looking Away you would look at me and it never occured to me that you might be choosing the man of your life you would look at me over the bottles and the corpses and I thought you must be playing with me you must think I'm crazy enough to step behind your eyes into the open elevator shaft so I looked away and I waited until you became a palm tree or a crow or the vast grey ocean of wind or the vast grey ocean of mind

234

This Isn't China
Hold me close and tell me what the world is like I don’t want to look outside I want to depend on your eyes and your lips I don’t want to feel anything but your hand on the old raw bumper I don’t want to feel anything else If you love the dead rocks and the huge rough pine trees Ok I like them too Tell me if the wind makes a pretty sound in the billion billion needles I’ll close my eyes and smile Tell me if it’s a good morning or a clear morning Tell me what the fuck kind of morning it is and I’ll buy it And get the dog to stop whining and barking This isn’t China nobody’s going to eat it It’s just going to get fed and petted Ok where were we? Ok go if you must. I’ll create the cosmos by myself I’ll let it all stick to me every fucking pine needle And I’ll broadcast my affection from this shaven dome 360 degrees to all the dramatic vistas to all the mists and snows that moves across the shining mountains

235

to the women bathing in the stream and combing their hair on the roofs to the voiceless ones who have petitioned me from their surprising silence to the poor in the heart (oh more and more to them) to all the thought-forms and leaking mental objects that you get up here at the end of your ghostly life

236

It Seemed The Better Way
It seemed the better way When first I heard him speak But now it's much too late To turn the other cheek It sounded like the truth It seemed the better way Though no one but a fool Would bless the meek today I wonder what it was I wonder what it meant This rising up with love This lying down with death Better hold my tongue Better know my place Cup of blood with everyone Try to say the Grace

237

Never Mind
The war was lost The treaty signed I was not caught I crossed the line I had to leave My life behind I had a name But never mind Your victory Was so complete That some among you Thought to keep A record of Our little lives The clothes we wore Our pots our knives The games of luck Our soldiers played The stones we cut The songs we made Our law of peace Which understands A husband leads A wife commands And all of this Expressions of The High Indifference Some call Love The High Indifference Some call Fate But we had Names More intimate

238

Names so deep and Names so true They're lost to me And dead to you There is no need That this survive There's truth that lives And truth that dies There's truth that lives And truth that dies I don't know which So never mind I could not kill The way you kill I could not hate I tried I failed No man can see The vast design Or who will be Last of his kind The story's told With facts and lies You own the world So never mind

239

When I Went Out
When I went out to tell her The love that can't be told She hid in themes of marble And deep reliefs of gold When I caught her in the flesh And floated on her hips Her bosom was a fishing net To harvest infant lips A soft dismissal in her gaze And I was more than free But took a while to undertake My full transparency Ages since I went to look Or she would think to hide Torn the cover torn the book The stories all untied But someone made of thread and mist Attends her every grace Sees more beauty than I did When I was in his place

240

Thousand Kisses Deep
For Those Who Greeted Me You came to me this morning And you handled me like meat. You´d have to live alone to know How good that feels, how sweet. My mirror twin, my next of kin, I´d know you in my sleep. And who but you would take me in A thousand kisses deep? I loved you when you opened Like a lily to the heat. I´m just another snowman Standing in the rain and sleet, Who loved you with his frozen love His second-hand physique With all he is, and all he was A thousand kisses deep. All soaked in sex, and pressed against The limits of the sea: I saw there were no oceans left For scavengers like me. We made it to the forward deck I blessed our remnant fleet And then consented to be wrecked A thousand kisses deep. I know you had to lie to me, I know you had to cheat. But the Means no longer guarantee The Virtue in Deceit. That truth is bent, that beauty spent, That style is obsolete Ever since the Holy Spirit went A thousand kisses deep.

241

(So what about this Inner Light That´s boundless and unique? I´m slouching through another night A thousand kisses deep.)

I´m turning tricks; I´m getting fixed, I´m back on Boogie Street. I tried to quit the business Hey, I´m lazy and I´m weak. But sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go A thousand kisses deep. (And fragrant is the thought of you, The file on you complete Except what we forgot to do A thousand kisses deep.) The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it´s done Your little winning streak. And summoned now to deal With your invincible defeat, You live your life as if it´s real A thousand kisses deep. (I jammed with Diz and Dante I did not have their sweep But once or twice, they let me play A thousand kisses deep.) And I´m still working with the wine, Still dancing cheek to cheek. The band is playing "Auld Lang Syne" The heart will not retreat. And maybe I had miles to drive, And promises to keep You ditch it all to stay alive A thousand kisses deep.

242

And now you are the Angel Death And now the Paraclete; And now you are the Savior's Breath And now the Belsen heap. No turning from the threat of love, No transcendental leap As witnessed here in time and blood A thousand kisses deep.

243

Go Little Book
Go little book And hide And be ashamed Of your irrelevance A fluke Has made you prominent You were meant To be discovered Later When there are no more Floods and earthquakes And holy wars Go little book And stop disgracing me There are serious men And women in my life And you have given them The upper hand Hide behind A window O my dear lighthearted And transparent Book Or crush yourself Beneath a defeat But hide Hide quickly now And let me hear from you In our secret code Which resembles A bad cough

244

That dark rattle Which ignores The challenges of love The crystals of perfection O speak to me From places You will find Go little book Invite me there

245

The Genius
For you I will be a ghetto jew and dance and put white stockings on my twisted limbs and poison wells across the town For you I will be an apostate jew and tell the Spanish priest of the blood vow in the Talmud and where the bones of the child are hid For you I will be a banker jew and bring to ruin a proud old hunting king and end his line For you I will be a Broadway jew and cry in theatres for my mother and sell bargain goods beneath the counter For you I will be a doctor jew and search in all the garbage cans for foreskins to sew back again

246

For you I will be a Dachau jew and lie down in lime with twisted limbs and bloated pain no mind can understand

247

Beneath My Hands
Beneath my hands your small breasts are the upturned bellies of breathing fallen sparrows. Wherever you move I hear the sounds of closing wings of falling wings. I am speechless because you have fallen beside me because your eyelashes are the spines of tiny fragile animals. I dread the time when your mouth begins to call me hunter. When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you. I want them to surrender before you the trembling rhyme of your face from their deep caskets. When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful I want my body and my hands to be pools for your looking and laughing.

248

Poem
I heard of a man who says words so beautifully that if he only speaks their name women give themselves to him. If I am dumb beside your body while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips. it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside the door.

249

My Lady Can Sleep
My lady can sleep Upon a handkerchief Or if it be Fall Upon a fallen leaf. I have seen the hunters kneel before her hem Even in her sleep She turns away from them. The only gift they offer Is their abiding grief I pull out my pockets For a handkerchief or leaf.

250

Millennium
This could be my little book about love if I wrote it-but my good demon said: 'Lay off documents!' Everybody was watching me burn my books-I swung my liberty torch happy as a gestapo brute; the only thing I wanted to save was a scar a burn or two-but my good demon said: 'Lay off documents! The fire's not important!' The pile was safely blazing. I went home to take a bath. I phoned my grandmother. She is suffering from arthritis. 'Keep well,' I said, 'don't mind the pain.' 'You neither,' she said. Hours later I wondered did she mean don't mind my pain or don't mind her pain? Whereupon my good demon said: 'Is that all you can do?' Well was it? Was it all I could do? There was the old lady eating alone, thinking about Prince Albert, Flanders Field, Kishenev, her fingers too sore for TV knobs; but how could I get there ? The books were gone my address lists-My good demon said again: 'Lay off documents!

251

You know how to get there!' And suddenly I did! I remembered it from memory! I found her pouring over the royal family tree, 'Grandma,' I almost said, 'you've got it upside down--' 'Take a look,' she said, 'it only goes to George V.' 'That's far enough you sweet old blood!' 'You're right!' she sang and burned the London Illustrated Souvenir I did not understand the day it was till I looked outside and saw a fire in every window on the street and crowds of humans crazy to talk and cats and dogs and birds smiling at each other!

252

The Only Tourist In Havana Turns His Thoughts Homewards
Come, my brothers, let us govern Canada, let us find our serious heads, let us dump asbestos on the White House, let us make the French talk English, not only here but everywhere, let us torture the Senate individually until they confess, let us purge the New Party, let us encourage the dark races so they'll be lenient when they take over, let us make the CBC talk English, let us all lean in one direction and float down to the coast of Florida, let us have tourism, let us flirt with the enemy, let us smelt pig-iron in our back yards, let us sell snow to under-developed nations, (It is true one of our national leaders was a Roman Catholic?) let us terrorize Alaska, let us unite Church and State, let us not take it lying down, let us have two Governor Generals at the same time, let us have another official language, let us determine what it will be, let us give a Canada Council Fellowship to the most original suggestion, let us teach sex in the home to parents, let us threaten to join the U.S.A.

253

and pull out at the last moment, my brothers, come, our serious heads are waiting for us somewhere like Gladstone bags abandoned after a coup d'état, let us put them on very quickly, let us maintain a stony silence on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

254

Waiting for Marianne
I have lost a telephone with your smell in it I am living beside the radio all the stations at once but I pick out a Polish lullaby I pick it out of the static it fades I wait I keep the beat it comes back almost alseep Did you take the telephone knowing I'd sniff it immoderately maybe heat up the plastic to get all the crumbs of your breath and if you won't come back how will you phone to say you won't come back so that I could at least argue

255

Poem 1
I stopped to listen, but he did not come. I begain again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and didn't work at all. Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

256

Poem 50
I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name. The raw heart beat against the world, and the tears were for my lost victory. But you are here. You have always been here. The world is all forgetting, and the heart is a rage of directions, but your name unifies the heart, and the world is lifted into its place. Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller's heart for his turning.

257

Do Not Forget Old Friends
Do not forget old friends you knew long before I met you the times I know nothing about being someone who lives by himself and only visits you on a raid

258

I Wonder How Many People in This City
I wonder how many people in this city live in furnished rooms. Late at night when i look out at the buildings I swear I see a face in every window looking back at me and when I turn away I wonder how many go back to their desks and write this down.

259

Song
I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I'd never been your lover

260

When This American Woman
When this American woman, whose thighs are bound in casual red cloth, comes thundering past my sitting place like a forest-burning Mongol tribe, the city is ravished and brittle buildings of a hundred years splash into the street; and my eyes are burnt for the embroidered Chinese girls, already old, and so small between the thin pines on these enormous landscapes, that if you turn your head they are lost for hours.

261

I Have Not Lingered In European Monosteries
I Have Not Lingered In European Monosteries and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell; I have not parted the grasses or purposefully left them thatched. I have not held my breath so that I might hear the breathing of God or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise, or starved for visions. Although I have watched him often I have not become the heron, leaving my body on the shore, and I have not become the luminous trout, leaving my body in the air. I have not worshipped wounds and relics, or combs of iron, or bodies wrapped and burnt in scrolls. I have not been unhappy for ten thousands years. During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep. My favourite cooks prepare my meals, my body cleans and repairs itself, and all my work goes well.

262

I Long to Hold Some Lady
I long to hold some lady For my love is far away, And will not come tomorrow And was not here today. There is no flesh so perfect As on my lady's bone, And yet it seems so distant When I am all alone: As though she were a masterpiece In some castled town, That pilgrims come to visit And priests to copy down. Alas, I cannot travel To a love I have so deep Or sleep too close beside A love I want to keep. But I long to hold some lady, For flesh is warm and sweet. Cold skeletons go marching Each night beside my feet.

263

Now of Sleeping
Under her grandmother's patchwork quilt a calico bird's-eye view of crops and boundaries naming dimly the districts of her body sleeps my Annie like a perfect lady Like ages of weightless snow on tiny oceans filled with light her eyelids enclose deeply a shade tree of birthday candles one for every morning until the now of sleeping The small banner of blood kept and flown by Brother Wind long after the pierced bird fell down is like her red mouth among the squalls of pillow Bearers of evil fancy of dark intention and corrupting fashion who come to rend the quilt plough the eye and ground the mouth will contend with mighty Mother Goose and Farmer Brown and all good stories of invincible belief which surround her sleep like the golden wheather of a halo Well-wishers and her true lover may stay to watch my Annie sleeping like a perfect lady under her grandmother's patchwork quilt but they must promise to whisper and to vanish by morning all but her one true lover.

264

The Next One
Things are better in Milan. Things are a lot better in Milan. My adventure has sweetened. I met a girl and a poet. One of them was dead and one of them was alive. The poet was from Peru and the girl was a doctor. She was taking antibiotics. I will never forget her. She took me into a dark church consecrated to Mary. Long live the horses and the sandles. The poet gave me back my spirit which I had lost in prayer. He was a great man out of the civil war. He said his death was in my hands because I was the next one to explain the weakness of love. The poet was Cesar Vallejo who lies at the floor of his forehead. Be with me now great warrior whose strength depends solely on the favours of a woman. THE NEXT ONE From the original version of My Life in Art: I lost my tan in Italy and I got fat on pasta and the starch of loneliness. I must fast for forty days. Sabina wrote me from the temple in Germany. She said that the old books say you should fast once each year for the number of days corresponding to your age. She was on the eight day of an intended twentyeight-day fast. Also I neglected to twist my feet so the heart went crazy. I must phone Patricia who was so good to me. The line is busy. "cover of Greatest Hits was taken in a mirror of a hotel room in Milan - I rarely ever look this good, or bad, depending on your politics"

265

The Pro 1973
Lost my voice in New York City never heard it again after sixty-seven Now I talk like you Now I sing like you Cigarette and coffee to make me sick Couple of families to make me think Going to see my lawyer Going to read my mail Lost my voice in New York City Guess you always knew

THE PRO from the Nashville Notebooks of 1969: I leave my silence to a co-operative of poets who have already bruised their mouths against it. I leave my homesick charm to the scavengers of spare change who work the old artistic corners. I leave the shadow of my manly groin to those who write for pay. I leave to several jealous men a second-rate legend of my life. To those few high school girls who preferred my work to Dylan's I leave my stone ear and my disposable Franciscan ambitions

266

Summer-Haiku
For Frank and Marian Scott Silence

and a deeper silence

when the crickets

hesitate

267

Poem 17
I perceived the outline of your breasts through your Hallowe'en costume I knew you were falling in love with me because no other man could perceive the advance of your bosom into his imagination It was a rupture of your unusual modesty for me and me alone through which you impressed upon my shapeless hunger the incomparable and final outline of your breasts like two deep fossil shells which remained all night long and probably forever

268

Poem 111
Each man has a way to betray the revolution This is mine

269

You Do Not Have To Love Me
You do not have to love me just because you are all the women I have ever wanted I was born to follow you every night while I am still the many men who love you I meet you at a table I take your fist between my hands in a solemn taxi I wake up alone my hand on your absense in Hotel Discipline I wrote all these songs for you I burned red and black candles shaped like a man and a woman I married the smoke of two pyramids of sandalwood I prayed for you I prayed that you would love me and that you would not love me

270

Hydra 1960
Anything that moves is white, a gull, a wave, a sail, and moves too purely to be aped. Smash the pain. Never pretend peace. The consolumentum has not, never will be kissed. Pain cannot compromise this light. Do violence to the pain, ruin the easy vision, the easy warning, water for those who need to burn. These are ruthless: rooster shriek, bleached goat skull. Scalpels grow with poppies if you see them truly red.

271

Hydra 1963
The stony path coiled around me and bound me to the night. A boat hunted the edge of the sea under a hissing light. Something soft involved a net and bled around a spear. The blunt death, the cumulus jet – I spoke to you, I thought you near! Or was the night so black that something died alone? A man with a glistening back beat the food against a stone.

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The Poetry Place
This is for you it is my full heart it is the book I meant to read you when we were old Now I am a shadow I am restless as an empire You are the woman who released me I saw you watching the moon you did not hesitate to love me with it I saw you honouring the wind-flowers caught in the rocks you loved me with them At night I saw you dance alone on the small wet pebbles of the shoreline and you welcomed me into the circle more than a guest All this happened in the truth of time in the truth of flesh I saw you with a child you brought me to this perfume and his visions without demand of blood On so many wooden tables adorned with food and candles a thousand sacraments which you carried in your basket I visited my clay I visited my birth and you guarded my back as I became small and frightened enough to be born again

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I wanted you for your beauty and you gave me more than yourself you shared your beauty this I only learned tonight as I recall the mirrors you walked away from after you had given them whatever they claimed for my initiation Now I am a shadow I long for the boundaries of my wandering and I move with the energy of your prayer and I move in the direction of your prayer for you are kneeling like a bouquet in a cave of a bone behind my forehead and I move toward a love you have dreamed for me

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Dusko’s Taverna 1967
They are still singing down at Dusko's, sitting under the ancient pine tree, in the deep night of fixed and falling stars. If you go to your window you can hear them. It is the end of someone's wedding, or perhaps a boy is leaving on a boat in the morning. There is a place for you at the table, wine for you, and apples from the mainland, a space in the songs for your voice. Throw something on, and whoever it is you must tell that you are leaving, tell them, or take them, but hurry: they have sent for you –– the call has come –– they will not wait forever. They are not even waiting now

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No. 63
Dance on the money the heads of presidents red toenails this ‘poem’ is an I.O.U. for 10,000 drachmas on your step-smooth shoulders My table rushes up to give you a marble stage black olives live forever in the tired oil of your grace Sinking under needles of bazouki you threaten us with jobs in the Sahara or a salary of halvah oh the hair is real that pilots the thighs into the important satin theatre ruined like Greece by overuse but all we have of the Golden age Your courting clothes sleeping in cedar your grandmother still alive on Hydra ‘Don’t tell her that you saw me naked’

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A Deep Happiness
A deep happiness has sized me My Christian friends say that I have received the Holy Spirit It is only truth of solitude It is only the torn anemone fastened to the rock its root exposed to the off-shore wind O friend of my scribbled life your heart is like mine – your loneliness will bring you home

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The Embrace
When you stumble suddenly into his full embrace, he hides away so not to see his creature face to face. Your yourself are hidden too with all your sins of state; there is no king to pardon you; his mercy is more intimate He does not stand before you, he does not dwell within; this passion has no point of view, it is the heart of everything. There is no hill to see this from. You share one body now with the serpent you forbid, and with the dove that you allow. The imitations of his love he suffers patiently, until you can be born with him some hopeless night in Galilee; until you lose your pride in him, until your faith objective fails, until you stretch your arms so wide you do not need these Roman nails. Idolators on every side, they make an object of the Lord. They hang him on a cross so high that you must ever move toward. They bid you cast the world aside and hurl your prayers at him. Then the idol-makers dance all night upon your suffering.

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But when you rise from his embrace I trust you will be strong and free and tell no tales about his face, and praise Creation joyously.

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My Mother Asleep remembering my mother at a theater in Athens thirty thirty-five years ago a revue by Theodorakis those great songs she fell asleep in the chair beside me in the open air theatre she had arrived that day from Montreal and the play started close to midnight and she slept through the mandolins and the great songs I was young I hadn’t had my children I didn’t know how far away your love could be I didn’t know how tired you could get

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Days of Kindness
Greece is a good place to look at the moon, isn’t it You can read by moonlight You can read on the terrace You can see a face as you saw it when you were young There was good light then oil lamps and candles and those little flames that floated on a cork in olive oil What I loved in my old life I haven’t forgotten It lives in my spine Marianne and the child The days of kindness It rises in my spine and it manifests as tears I pray that loving memory exists for them too the precious ones I overthrew for an education in the world

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To Be Mentioned At Funerals
Those days were just the twilight And soon the poems and the songs Were only associations Edged with bitterness Focused into pain By paintings in a minor key Remember on warm nights When he made love to strangers And he would struggle through old words Unable to forget he once created new ones And fumble at their breasts with broken hands When finally he did become very old And nights were cold because No one was a stranger And there was little to do But sift the years through his yellow fingers Then like fire-twisted shadows of dancers Alternatives would array themselves Around his wicker chair And he regretted everything

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Another Cherry Brandy
Another cherry brandy and I will propose to the waitress, who sets the glass before me holding it like a blossom with such grace I know she is a Master of Flower Arrangement. O arrange me, Lady, in this rainy November night. Set my mind in the arborite street so that I catch as easily as glistening tar the neon of Peel & St. Catherine, so that home-bound clubbers, broke and angry with their girl-friends, will clasp and wave me for one last toast to everything they know is true.

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Just The Worse Time
This year time was long between ..... old gardeners tending ..... black-yellow heaps of smouldering leaves and smothering children armoured in Red River coats and muffler turns --..... and so as nude girls discovered bathing, ..... striken, somehow unable to cover their breasts the embarrassed trees fidgeted in unsolicited sun. We were embarrassed too. prayed for great heavy drifts of snow to cover trees and bare streets, to heap on roofs of houses, to swaddle mountains and waters --but the snow came thin, covering the ground like cheap gauze, clinging in tatters to the bark, ..... preserving footprints in the mud. No. It could not come like an aristocrat, like de Bergerac, like a white waving plume, ..... as we prayed for ..... and will pray for ..... again.

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Action
The stars turn their noble stories, turn their heroes upside down; the moon, obsessed calm moth pursues its private candle past the down--All these marvels happen while I keep silent on my love and say nothing for her beauty. How can I bear the gulls perfect orbit round and round the hidden fish, how can I watch the fled sun seize and harden the ridge of rocks? In this glory I am innocent! I am empty of command! I live in the world! Distant face, like an icon’s disciplined to tenderness, my silence is for you Emptiness creates the field where innocent as dogs we clash for the complete embrace.

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The First Vision
Sitting mangled in their chairs like the losers at a Borgia banquet--my grandfather my father my stepfather. Mother in a corner of the dining-room, ignorant of her power, urging the corpses to eat--Eat! Eat it all up! I made it! Anguished at their ingratitude; half-chewed meat falling like caterpillars on their old-fashioned vests. She didn’t know the roastbeef was poisoned.. It was the perfect cut coveted by every family cook--as it stewed it sucked, it turned to juice the venom lost in the air of the kitchen. Still, Mother, still, still--you’ll scream softer if you think of the hungry children in India. Don’t lean across the tablecloth. Dont’t look in these outwitted thankless eyes.

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Lord on Peel Street
He has returned from countless wars, blinded and hopelessly lame, He endures the morning streetcars and counts ages in a Peel Street room. Once for music he tamed a banjo and softened Bach in a wooden whistle, but he let the flutes and folksongs go for the slow march under his window. He is kept in his room like a court jew, to consult on plagues or hurricanes, and he never walks with them on the sea or joins their lonely sidewalk games.

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Bait
You stay in the grove To ambush the unicorn. I don’t know what the hunters gave, But all the money of the sun Falling betwen the shadows of your face In yellow coin Could not bribe away the scorn Which fastens up your mouth. For whom are those hard lips? The hunters creeping through the green Beside their iron-collared hounds? Or that towered head who soon Will close his eyes Between your aproned knees? And when the animal is leashed To the pomegranate tree, Don’t come by my prison room Singing your victory, Or charm the guards to undo the chains With which I was bound before the hunt When I cried that I was a man. You stay in the grove To ambush the unicorn. And after wander to the poisoned streams Which the unicorn will never clean, And greet the good beasts thirsting there. Then follow through the holes and caves The animals who poisoned it And cohabit in each lair. I don’t know what the hunters gave, But all the money of the sun Falling between the shadows of your face In yellow coin Could not bribe away the scorn Which fastens up your mouth.

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This Is War
There is no one to show these poems to Do not call a friend to witness what you must do alone These are my ashes I do not intend to save you any work by keeping silent You are not yet as strong as I am You believe me but I do not believe you This is war You are here to be destroyed

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The Only Poem
This is the only poem I can read I am the only one who can write it I didn't kill myself when things went wrong I didn't turn to drugs or teaching I tried to sleep but when I couldn't sleep I learned to write I learned to write what might be read one nights like this by one like me

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Gift
You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say This is not silence this is another poem and you would hand it back to me

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The Wrong Man
They locked up a man who wanted to rule the world The fools They locked up the wrong man

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Mission
I've worked at my work I've slept at my sleep I've died at my death And now I can leave Leave what is needed And leave what is full Need in the Spirit And need in the Hole Beloved, I'm yours As I've always been From marrow to pore From longing to skin Now that my mission Has come to its end: Pray I'm forgiven The life that I've led The Body I chased It chased me as well My longing's a place My dying a sail

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The Lovesick Monk
I shaved my head I put on robes I sleep in the corner of a cabin sixty-five hundred feet up a mountain It's dismal here The only thing I don't need is a comb - Mt. Baldy, 1997

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You'd Sing Too
You'd sing too if you found yourself in a place like this You wouldn't worry about whether you were as good as Ray Charles or Edith Piaf You'd sing You'd sing not for yourself but to make a self out of the old food rotting in the astral bowel and the loveless thud of your own breathing You'd become a singer faster than it takes to hate a rival's charm and you'd sing, darling you'd sing too

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The Wind Moves
The wind moves the palm trees and the fringes o f the beach umbrellas The children go down the waterslide The grey Arabian Sea slaps its soiled lace underwear on the dirty flats The wind moves everything and then stops but my pen keeps on writing by itself Dear Roshi I am dead now I died before you just as you predicted in the early 70s

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I Wrote For Love
I wrote for love. Then I wrote for money. With someone like me it's the same thing.

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The Sweetest Little Song
You go your way I'll go your way too

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Who Do You Really Remember
My father died when I was nine; my mother when I was forty-six. In between, my dog and several friends. Recently, more friends, real friends, uncles and aunts, many acquaintances. And then there's Sheila. She said, Don't be a jerk, Len. Take your desire seriously. She died not long after we were fifteen.

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The Moon
The moon is outside. I saw the great uncomplicated thing when I went to take a leak just now. I should have looked at it longer. I am a poor lover of the moon. I see it all at once and that's it for me and the moon.

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On the path for C.C. On the path of loneliness I came to the place of song and tarried there for half my life Now I leave my guitar and my keyboards my friends and s-x companions and I stumble out again on the path of loneliness I am old but I have no regrets not one even though I am angry and alone and filled with fear and desire Bend down to me from your mist and vines O high one, long-fingered and deep-seeing Bend down to this sack of poison and rotting teeth and press your lips to the light of my heart

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I Am Dying
I am dying because you have not died for me and the world still loves you. I wirte this because I know that your kisses are born blind on the songs that touch you. I don't want a purpose in your life I want to be lost among your thoughts the way you listen to New York City when you fall asleep.

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From A Notebook
Hotel de France 1968

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Suzanne

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Joan Of Arc

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The Old Revolution

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The Stranger Song

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Field Commander Cohen

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Closing Time

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Hallelujah

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Biography
One of the most fascinating and enigmatic -- if not the most successful -- singer/songwriters of the late '60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across four decades of musicmaking interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the 1960s who is still working at the outset of the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn't even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties. Cohen was born in 1934, a year before Elvis Presley or Ronnie Hawkins, and his background -- personal, social, and intellectual -- couldn't have been more different from those of any rock stars of any generation; nor can he be easily compared even with any members of the generation of folksingers who came of age in the 1960s. Though he knew some country music and played it a bit as a boy, he didn't start performing on even a semi-regular basis, much less recording, until after he had already written several books -- and as an established novelist and poet, his literary accomplishments far exceed those of Bob Dylan or most anyone else who one cares to mention in music, at least this side of operatic librettists such as Hugo Von Hoffmanstahl or Stefan Zweig, figures from another musical and cultural world. He was born Leonard Norman Cohen into a middle-class Jewish family in the Montreal suburb of Westmount. His father, a clothing merchant (who also held a degree in engineering), died in 1943, when Cohen was nine years old. It was his mother who encouraged Cohen as a writer, especially of poetry, during his childhood. This fit in with the progressive intellectual environment in which he was raised, which allowed him free inquiry into a vast range of pursuits. His relationship to music was more tentative -- he took up the guitar at age 13, initially as a way to impress a girl, but was good enough to play country & western songs at local cafes, and he subsequently formed a group called the Buckskin Boys. At 17, he enrolled in McGill University as an English major -- by this time, he was writing poetry in earnest and became part of the university's tiny underground "bohemian" community. Cohen only earned average grades, but was a good enough writer to earn the McNaughton Prize in creative writing by the time he graduated in 1955 -- a year later, the ink barely dry on his degree, he published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), which got great reviews but didn't sell especially well. He was already beyond the age that rock & roll was aimed at -- Bob Dylan, by contrast, was still Robert Zimmerman, still in his teens, and young enough to become a devotee of Buddy Holly when the latter emerged. In 1961, Cohen published his second book of poetry, The Spice Box of Earth, which became an international success critically and commercially, and

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established Cohen as a major new literary figure. Meanwhile, he tried to join the family business and spent some time at Columbia University in New York, writing all the time. Between the modest royalties from sales of his second book, literary grants from the Canadian government, and a family legacy, he was able to live comfortably and travel around the world, partake of much of what it had to offer -- including some use of LSD when it was still legal -- and ultimately settling for an extended period in Greece, on the isle of Hydra in the Aegean Sea. He continued to publish, issuing a pair of novels, The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), with a pair of poetry collections, Flowers for Hitler (1964) and Parasites of Heaven (1966) around them. The Favorite Game was a very personal work about his early life in Montreal, but it was Beautiful Losers that proved another breakthrough, earning the kind of reviews that authors dare not even hope for -- Cohen found himself compared to James Joyce in the pages of The Boston Globe, and across four decades the book has enjoyed sales totaling well into six figures. It was around this time that he also started writing music again, songs being a natural extension of his poetry. His relative isolation on Hydra, coupled with his highly mobile lifestyle when he left the island, his own natural iconoclastic nature, and the fact that he'd avoided being overwhelmed (or even touched too seriously) by the currents running through popular music since the 1940s, combined to give Cohen a unique voice as a composer. Though he did settle in Nashville for a short time in the mid-'60s, he didn't write quite like anyone else in music, in the country music mecca or anywhere else. This might have been an impediment but for the intervention of Judy Collins, a folksinger who had just moved to the front rank of that field, and who had a voice just special enough to move her beyond the relatively emaciated ranks of remaining popular folk performers after Dylan shifted to electric music -- she was still getting heard, and not just by the purists left behind in Dylan's wake. She added Cohen's "Suzanne" to her repertory and put it onto her album In My Life, a record that was controversial enough in folk circles -- because of her cover of the Beatles song that gave the LP its title -- that it pulled in a lot of listeners and got a wide airing. "Suzanne" received a considerable amount of radio airplay from the LP, and Cohen was also represented on the album by "Dress Rehearsal Rag." It was Collins who persuaded Cohen to return to performing for the first time since his teens. He made his debut during the summer of 1967 at the Newport Folk Festival, followed by a pair of sold-out concerts in New York City and an appearance singing his songs and reciting his poems on the CBS network television show Camera Three, in a show entitled Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen. It was around the same time that actor/singer Noel Harrison brought "Suzanne" onto the pop charts with a recording of his own. One of those who saw Cohen perform at Newport was John Hammond, Sr., the legendary producer whose career went back to the 1930s and the likes of Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie, and extended up through Bob Dylan and, ultimately, to Bruce Springsteen. Hammond got Cohen signed to Columbia Records and he created The Songs of Leonard Cohen, which was released just before Christmas of 1967. Producer John Simon was able to find a restrained yet appealing approach to recording Cohen's voice, which might have been described as a appealingly sensitive near-monotone; yet that voice was perfectly suited to the material at hand, all of which, written in a very personal language, seemed drenched in downbeat images and a spirit of discovery as a path to unsettling revelation.

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Despite its spare production and melancholy subject matter -- or, very possibly because of it - the album was an immediate hit by the standards of the folk music world and the budding singer/songwriter community. In an era in which millions of listeners hung on the next albums of Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel -- whose own latest album had ended with a minor-key rendition of "Silent Night" set against a radio news account of the death of Lenny Bruce -- Cohen's music quickly found a small but dedicated following. College students by the thousands bought it; in its second year of release, the record sold over 100,000 copies. The Songs of Leonard Cohen was as close as Cohen ever got to mass audience success. Amid all of this sudden musical activity, he hardly neglected his other writing -- in 1968, Cohen released a new volume, Selected Poems: 1956-1968, which included both old and newly published work, and earned him the Governor-General's Award, Canada's highest literary honor, which he proceeded to decline to accept. By this time, he was actually almost more a part of the rock scene, residing for a time in New York's Chelsea Hotel, where his neighbors included Janis Joplin and other performing luminaries, some of whom influenced his songs very directly. His next album, Songs from a Room (1969), was characterized by an even greater spirit of melancholy -- even the relatively spirited "A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes" was steeped in such depressing sensibilities, and the one song not written by Cohen, "The Partisan," was a grim narrative about the reasons for and consequences of resistance to tyranny that included lines like "She died without a whisper" and included images of wind blowing past graves. Joan Baez subsequently recorded the song, and in her hands it was a bit more upbeat and inspiring to the listener; Cohen's rendition made it much more difficult to get past the costs presented by the singer's persona. On the other hand, "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy," although as downbeat as anything else here, did present Cohen in his most expressive and commercial voice, a nasal but affecting and finely nuanced performance. Still, in all, Songs from a Room was less well received commercially and critically -- Bob Johnston's restrained, almost minimalist production made it less overtly appealing than the subtly commercial trappings of his debut, though the album did have a pair of tracks, "Bird on the Wire" and "The Story of Isaac," that became standards rivaling "Suzanne" -- "The Story of Isaac," a musical parable woven around biblical imagery about Vietnam (which is also relevant to the Iraq War), was one of the most savage and piercing songs to come out of the antiwar movement, and showed a level of sophistication in its music and lyrics that put it in a whole separate realm of composition; it received an even better airing on the Live Songs album, in a performance recorded in Berlin during 1972. Cohen may not have been a widely popular performer or recording artist, but his unique voice and sound, and the power of his writing and its influence, helped give him entrée to rock's front-ranked performers, an odd status for the now 35-year-old author/composer. He appeared at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival in England, a post-Woodstock gathering of stars and superstars, including late appearances by such soon-to-die-or-disband legends as Jimi Hendrix and the Doors; looking nearly as awkward as his fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell, Cohen strummed his acoustic guitar backed by a pair of female singers in front of an audience of 600,000 ("It's a large nation, but still weak"), comprised in equal portions of fans, freaks, and belligerent gatecrashers, but the mere fact that he was there -- sandwiched

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somewhere between Miles Davis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer -- was a clear statement of the status (if not the popular success) he'd achieved. One portion of his set, "Tonight Will Be Fine," was released on a subsequent live album, while his performance of "Suzanne" was one of the highlights of Murray Lerner's long-delayed, 1996-issued documentary Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival. Already, he had carved out a unique place for himself in music, as much author as performer and recording artist, letting his songs develop and evolve across years -- his distinctly noncommercial voice became part of his appeal to the audience he found, giving him a unique corner of the music audience, made of listeners descended from the same people who had embraced Bob Dylan's early work before he'd become a mass-media phenomenon in 1964. In a sense, Cohen embodied a phenomenon vaguely similar to what Dylan enjoyed before his early-'70s tour with the Band -- people bought his albums by the tens and, occasionally, hundreds of thousands, but seemed to hear him in uniquely personal terms. He earned his audience seemingly one listener at a time, by word of mouth more than by the radio which, in any case (especially on the AM dial), was mostly friendly to covers of Cohen's songs by other artists. Cohen's third album, Songs of Love and Hate (1971), was his most powerful body of work to date, brimming with piercing lyrics and music as poignantly affecting as it was minimalist in its approach -- arranger Paul Buckmaster's work on strings was peculiarly muted, and the children's chorus that showed up on "Last Year's Man" was spare in its presence; balancing them was Cohen's most effective vocalizing to date, brilliantly expressive around such acclaimed songs as "Joan of Arc," "Dress Rehearsal Rag" (which had been recorded by Judy Collins five years before), and "Famous Blue Raincoat." The bleakness of the tone and subject matter ensured that he would never become a "pop" performer; even the beat-driven "Diamonds in the Mine," with its catchy children's chorus accompaniment and all, and with a twangy electric guitar accompaniment to boot, was as dark and venomous-toned a song as Columbia Records put out in 1971. And the most compelling moments -- among an embarrassment of riches -- came on lyrics like "Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc/As she came riding through the dark/No Moon to keep her armor bright/No man to get her through this night...."; indeed, hearing Cohen's lyrics 25 years on, one could almost find a burlesque of Cohen's music in the songs of Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe Buffay on Friends -- who, even money bet probably grew up on Songs of Love and Hate in her fictional bio -- and lyrics like "They found their bodies the third day...." Teenagers of the late '60s (or any era that followed) listening devotedly to Leonard Cohen might have worried their parents, but also could well have been the smartest or most sensitive kids in their class and the most well-balanced emotionally -- if they weren't depressed -- but also effectively well on their way out of being teenagers, and probably too advanced for their peers and maybe most of their teachers (except maybe the ones listening to Cohen). Songs of Love and Hate, coupled with the earlier hit versions of "Suzanne," etc., earned Cohen a large international cult following. He also found himself in demand in the world of commercial filmmaking, as director Robert Altman used his music in his 1971 feature film McCabe and Mrs. Miller, starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, a revisionist period film set at the turn of the 19th century that was savaged by the critics (and, by some accounts, sabotaged by its own studio) but went on to become one of the director's best-

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loved movies. The following year, he also published a new poetry collection, The Energy of Slaves. As was his won't, Cohen spent years between albums, and in 1973 he seemed to take stock of himself as a performer by issuing Leonard Cohen: Live Songs. Not a conventional live album, it was a compendium of performances from various venues across several years and focused on highlights of his output from 1969 onward. It showcased his writing as much as his performing, but also gave a good account of his appeal to his most serious fans -- those still uncertain of where they stood in relation to his music who could get past the epic-length "Please Don't Pass Me By" knew for certain they were ready to "join" the inner circle of his legion of devotees after that, while others who only appreciated "Bird on the Wire" or "The Story of Isaac" could stay comfortably on an outer ring. Meanwhile, in 1973, his music became the basis for a theatrical production called Sisters of Mercy, conceived by Gene Lesser and loosely based on Cohen's life, or at least a fantasy version of his life. A three-year lag ensued between Songs of Love and Hate and Cohen's next album, and most critics and fans just assumed he'd hit a dry spell with the live album covering the gap. He was busy concertizing, however, in the United States and Europe during 1971 and 1972, and extending his appearances into Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was during this period that he also began working with pianist and arranger John Lissauer, whom he engaged as producer of his next album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974). That album seemed to justify his fans' continued faith in his work, presenting Cohen in a more lavish musical environment. He proved capable of holding his own in a pop environment, even if the songs were mostly still depressing and bleak. The following year, Columbia Records released The Best of Leonard Cohen, featuring a dozen of his best-known songs -- principally hits in the hands of other performers -- from his previous four LPs (though it left out "Dress Rehearsal Rag"). It was also during the mid-'70s that Cohen first crossed paths professionally with Jennifer Warnes, appearing on the same bill with the singer at numerous shows, which would lead to a series of key collaborations in the ensuing decade. By this time, he was a somewhat less mysterious persona, having toured extensively and gotten considerable exposure -- among many other attributes, Cohen became known for his uncanny attractiveness to women, which seemed to go hand in glove with the romantic subjects of most of his songs. In 1977, Cohen reappeared with the ironically titled Death of a Ladies' Man, the most controversial album of his career, produced by Phil Spector. The notion of pairing Spector -known variously as a Svengali-like presence to his female singers and artists and the most unrepentant (and often justified) over-producer in the field of pop music -- with Cohen must have seemed like a good one to someone at some point, but apparently Cohen himself had misgivings about many of the resulting tracks that Spector never addressed, having mixed the record completely on his own. The resulting LP suffered from the worst attributes of Cohen's and Spector's work, overly dense and self-consciously imposing in its sound, and virtually bathing the listener in Cohen's depressive persona, but showing his limited vocal abilities to disadvantage, owing to Spector's use of "scratch" (i.e., guide) vocals and his unwillingness to permit the artist to redo some of his weaker moments on those takes. For the first (and only) time in Cohen's career, his near-monotone delivery of this period wasn't a

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positive attribute. Cohen's unhappiness with the album was widely known among fans, who mostly bought it with that caveat in mind, so it didn't harm his reputation -- a year after its release, Cohen also published a new literary collection using the title Death of a Ladies' Man. Cohen's next album, Recent Songs (1979), returned him to the spare settings of his early-'70s work and showed his singing to some of its best advantage. Working with veteran producer Henry Lewy (best known for his work with Joni Mitchell), the album showed Cohen's singing as attractive and expressive in its quiet way, and songs such as "The Guests" seeming downright pretty -- he still wrote about life and love, and especially relationships, in stark terms, but he almost seemed to be moving into a pop mode on numbers such as "Humbled in Love." Frank Sinatra never needed to look over his shoulder at Cohen (at least, as a singer), but he did seem to be trying for a slicker pop sound at moments on his record. Then came 1984, and two key new works in Cohen's output -- the poetic/religious volume The Book of Mercy and the album Various Positions (1984). The latter, recorded with Jennifer Warnes, is arguably his most accessible album of his entire career up to that time -- Cohen's voice, now a peculiarly expressive baritone instrument, found a beautiful pairing with Warnes, and the songs were as fine as ever, steeped in spirituality and sexuality, with "Dance Me to the End of Love" a killer opener: a wry, doom-laden yet impassioned pop-style ballad that is impossible to forget. Those efforts overlapped with some ventures by the composer/singer into other creative realms, including an award-winning short film that he wrote, directed, and scored, entitled I Am a Hotel, and the score for the 1985 conceptual film Night Magic, which earned a Juno Award in Canada for Best Movie Score. Sad to say, Various Positions went relatively unnoticed, and was followed by another extended sabbatical from recording, which ended with I'm Your Man (1988). But during his hiatus, Warnes had released her album of Cohen-authored material, entitled Famous Blue Raincoat, which had sold extremely well and introduced Cohen to a new generation of listeners. So when I'm Your Man did appear, with its electronic production (albeit still rather spare) and songs that added humor (albeit dark humor) to his mix of pessimistic and poetic conceits, the result was his best-selling record in more than a decade. The result, in 1991, was the release of I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, a CD of recordings of his songs by the likes of R.E.M., the Pixies, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and John Cale, which put Cohen as a songwriter pushing age 60 right back on center stage for the 1990s. He rose to the occasion, releasing The Future, an album that dwelt on the many threats facing mankind in the coming years and decades, a year later. Not the stuff of pop charts or MTV heavy rotation, it attracted Cohen's usual coterie of fans, and enough press interest as well as sufficient sales, to justify the release in 1994 of his second concert album, Cohen Live, derived from his two most recent tours. A year later came another tribute album, Tower of Song, featuring Cohen's songs as interpreted by Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, et al. In the midst of all of this new activity surrounding his writing and compositions, Cohen embarked on a new phase of his life. Religious concerns were never too far from his thinking and work, even when he was making a name for himself writing songs about love, and he had focused ever more on this side of life since Various Positions. He came to spend time at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center, a Buddhist retreat in California, and eventually became a full-time resident, becoming a Buddhist monk during the late '90s. When he re-emerged in 1999,

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Cohen had many dozens of new compositions in hand, songs and poems alike. His new collaborations were with singer/songwriter/musician Sharon Robinson, who also ended up producing the resulting album, Ten New Songs (2001) -- there also emerged during this period a release called Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979, comprised of live recordings from his tour of 22 years before. In 2004, the year he turned 70, Cohen released one of the most controversial albums of his career, Dear Heather. It revealed his voice anew, in this phase of his career, as a deep baritone more limited in range than on any previous recording, but it overcame this change in vocal timbre by facing it head-on, just as Cohen had done with his singing throughout his career -- it also contained a number of songs for which Cohen wrote music but not lyrics, a decided change of pace for a man who'd started out as a poet. And it was as personal a record as Cohen had ever issued. His return to recording was one of the more positive aspects of Cohen's resumption of his music activities. On another side, in 2005, he filed suit against his longtime business manager and his financial advisor over the alleged theft of more than five million dollars, at least some of which took place during his years at the Buddhist retreat. Four decades after he emerged as a public literary figure and then a performer, Cohen remains one of the most compelling and enigmatic musical figures of his era, and one of the very few of that era who commands as much respect and attention, and probably as large an audience, in the 21st century as he did in the 1960s. As much as any survivor of that decade, Cohen has held onto his original audience and has seen it grow across generations, in keeping with a body of music that is truly timeless and ageless. In 2006, his enduring influence seemed to be acknowledged in Lions Gate Films' release of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man, director Lian Lunson's concert/portrait of Cohen and his work and career. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

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In His Own Words

I guess it’s legitimate not to like someone’s work, but somehow those descriptions of my work got into the computer, you know, there was “suicide”, or “bedsit”, or “gloom”, “depressive”, “melancholy”, and every time they’d tap out my name those descriptions would come up. You know, as though seriousness had no place in song. The songs we love best are the sad songs. BBC Radio 1, 1994 I know something’s gotten into the computer under my name. And every time they press the button out come “gloom”, “despair”, “depression”, “melancholy”. It gets a bit tedious. But I’ve gotten accustomed to this tag. (1988) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 28-29 I sometimes see myself in the Court of Ferdinand, singing my songs to girls over a lute. (1967) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 23

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I sometimes in my wilder moments consider myself the leader of a government in exile. (1985) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 28 I don’t go around looking for joy. I don’t go around loking for melancholy either. I don’t have a programme. I’m not on an archeological expedition. (1974) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26 A pessimist is someone who is waiting for it to rain. But I’m already soaked to the skin. (1993) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

I’ve always been on the outside. My mother used to leave me outside in the snow in the winter in Montreal. She ussed to dress me very warmly and then just leave me outside. I could never get in, and those Montreal winter were bitter. (1985) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26-28

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They used to say razor blades should be distributed with my records. (1992) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 31 I’ve been living in an exploded landscape for a long time. I have a place to situate all of this. Because I’ve felt that things were going to blow up – it wasn’t as specific as the twin towers – but I’ve felt for some time there was going to be a shaking of the situation. MacLean’s, 2001 I do feel anxious a lot of the time. I don’t know whether my anxiety is more intense than anybody else’s. I suspect that it isn’t. But there’s also a confusion between depression and seriousness. I happen to like the mode of seriousness. (1979) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

There’s a place for my kind of music although it can never be mainstream. It is a sanctuary for me and for the people who can use it that way. That’s what I use it for. A sanctuary. (1972) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 25 Perhaps the songs have a form or a mood that is melancholy but they are not meant to depress. On the contrary, I know that in some cases they can have the opposite effect. (1974) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 26

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I would say I write my songs for people who find themselves in the kinds of predicaments that I found myself in. I think that’s a wide number of people. You could roughly call these people the broken-hearted. (1988) Leonard Cohen In His Own Words, 53 I have explored the same territory – in many different ways – because I have no answers to the problems and because I keep going to the same sources because they are timeless. And as I get older, I hope I can explore them more deeply, and with more courage and honesty rather than just urgency. Irving Layton, the great Canadian poet, once wrote about me that “Leonard Cohen has been blessed with never having had an original idea,” and I take that as a compliment because these things are what everybody goes through. Everybody lives the life of the heart, and we all know what it’s like to feel and break down, and I think we cherish that in our musicians and singers when they reveal that. Los Angeles Reader, 1993 My depression, so bleak and anguished, was just crucial, and I couldn’t shake it, it wouldn’t go away. I didn’t know what it was. I was ashamed of it, because it would be there even when things were good, and I would be saying to myself, “Really, what have you got to complain about?” But for people who suffer from acute clinical depression, it is quite irrelevant what the circumstances of your life are. Saturday Night, 2001 So one day, a few years ago, I was in a car, on my way to the airport. I was really, really low, on many medications, and pulled over, I reached behind to my valise, took out the pills, and threw out all the drugs I had. I said, “These things really don't even begin to confront my predicament.” I figured, If I am going to go down I would rather go down with my eyes wide open. Saturday Night, 2001 A big part of my life has been about overcoming depression. But as far as I could see, there was nothing to be depressed about (...) I had a deep sense of suffering that influenced most of my life. Most of my activities were about drinking, taking drugs, courting women or flirting with religious studies. With all this I tried to confront this depression that I simply couldn’t penetrate. The Euroman, 2001 I think people, perhaps legitimately sometimes, feel that anguish or suffering is the engine of creativity. It’s a very popular notion... I think most people live their lives in an emergency, and I’m certainly not unique in this respect. I have certainly battled depression over the years, and my time on Mount Baldy was one of the remedies. And I found that my depression might have been the background of my work, but not the spur, not the trigger. Although, without that background, the work isn’t

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easier. You know, lifting boulders isn’t easier when you’re in a good mood. Toronto Globe and Mail, 2001 Most of the songs that we love are sad songs, because we experience profound disappointment in our lives, all of us. And to hear it sung, well, that’s what this whole racket is about, isn’t it? LA Weekly, 2001 It's too late to be depressed. France-Inter Radio, 2001 From the letters I receive, I understand that many people who are or have been in the same situation have felt a kind of relief, a healing while listening to my songs. This is something that I have been very thankful for. If somebody has got enough time - or are bored enough - to examine my entire work in books and songs, there will, to a certain extent, be an exact description of the process and a few insights in the matter along the way. But I don't imagine that I am a therapist nor possess wisdom about what it is all about. I have described it as well as I could. The Euroman, Denmark, September 2001

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